


AU-gust 2020

by sub_divided



Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: AU-gust 2020, Alternate Universe - 19th Century, Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Alternate Universe - Idols, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Victorian Pulp Adventure / Historical Fantasy, F/F, F/M, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:09:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 27,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25657957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sub_divided/pseuds/sub_divided
Summary: A place to stash everything I write for AU-gust 2020 that I actually like, haha.Probably most chapters will be short and G-rated, but I might do other ratings too.  I'll update the tag list if/when that happens.See the author's note for the full list of prompts!  Also, for shippers - I'll put the pairings for each chapter in the chapter summary, so you can find the content you are searching for XD.
Relationships: Aerith Gainsborough/Cloud Strife, Aerith Gainsborough/Tifa Lockhart, Aerith Gainsborough/Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife, Sephiroth/Cloud Strife, Tifa Lockhart/Barret Wallace, Zack Fair & Cloud Strife, Zack Fair/Aerith Gainsborough
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20
Collections: AUgust 2020





	1. Fantasy AU

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the organizers of this challenge - it seems really fun! 
> 
> Here's the prompt list: 

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zack the adventurer recruits party members for a quest to slay a dragon! But Cid the artificer and Barret the fighter aren't exactly impressed with him, so far...
> 
> (Gen with implied background Cloud/Aerith - blink and you'll miss it.)

And so it was that on the first day of the month, on the eight month of the year, Zack the adventurer wandered into the local village tavern. 

“And so? What will you be having today?” The tavern wench asked. She was buxom of breast, with striking ruby eyes, milky skin, and a surprisingly kindly demeanor. A genasi somewhere in her family tree? 

“Flagons of ale!” Zack, the adventurer replied. “Enough for all the men here, who would seek adventure and treasure on this day!”

At the bar counter, a blond half-elf scoffed. “I hope you have deep pockets then,” he said, “you’ll need them.”

“Cid!” The bar girl turned to Zack with an apologetic expression. “Don’t mind him, he’s very cynical. But why only the men?”

“Oh, it’s just an expression… all who seek adventure are welcome to join me…” Zack had, at least, the integrity to look sheepish. 

However, the bartender just laughed and waved away the offense. 

“Don’t worry, I’m just messing with you. I would go, but I’m already needed here. I’m sure the other patrons would love to take you up on your offer, though, Mr…?”

“Zack, the adventurer! I am on a quest to slay a dragon, and liberate the hoard of gold it guards! All here are welcome to join, we’ll split the treasure fairly.”

“You mean you don’t have the muscle to handle it yourself…”

“Cid!” Tifa chastised, but Zack just laughed.

“Perhaps you are right… but I have the map and that’s worth something…”

“I’m interested,” a gruff, low voice cut in. A human fighter came to the bar, and roughly extended a large, gloved hand toward Zack. Shaking it, Zack found his own hand dwarfed, and wondered if this human-seeming man might not have some Goliath in his blood. 

“Excellent! A flagon of ale for this man-’”

”Name’s Barret!”

“-and also-” Zack put a friendly hand on the shoulder of the skeptical half-elf Cid, who scowled and swatted it away - “for our honest friend, who doesn’t hold back his opinions. To new beginnings!” 

“To new beginnings!” The bar girl - Tifa - reached over Cid’s shoulder, to clink glasses with Zack and Barret while Cid hunched lower on his stool, and rolled his eyes. 

****

In the morning, the three set out for adventure, Barret the fighter with a hearty whoop and Cid the artificer with great reluctance. (Why, then, did he join at all? Continue this tale to find out!) 

From the tavern, their path wound over a swiftly-flowing river and through the mysterious and enchanted woods, to the foot of the craggy mountains where the dragon kept its nest. 

That was, if they hadn’t lost their way. 

“The hell? Didn’t you say you had a map?” The fighter, Barret, demanded. “I don’t have months to blow on this quest, you know. While we’re runnin’ in circles, Marlene is learnin’ her ABCs without me!” - Marlene being the fighter’s tiny daughter, cute as a button and the apple of her daddy’s eye. 

“Yeah I think… hold on a second…” 

Cid the artificer just smirked, he loved being right - which of course, he always was. A couple more hours of this, and he’d leave the party with his conscience clear, able to tell Tifa he’d done his best to keep Barret alive. 

Just then, the party stumbled into a sunlit clearing. A small, homely cottage sat cozily in the middle of the clearing, illuminated by a shaft of sunlight that filtered through the gap in the trees. The path to the door was lined with peonies and primroses, and it glowed a bright white. 

As they traveled the white shell path to the door, they realized they’d been expected. 

“Took you long enough!” a joyous human voice called, from behind the house. “Well, what are you waiting for! Come around and say hello!”

The three adventurers, trading a glance, walked carefully to the garden behind the house, minding the flowers. 

There they saw a human girl in a long, lavender dress, wearing the amulet of a local religious order. Though her smile was small and secretive, still she possessed a kind of mysterious charm that held one’s attention - and indeed, even the flowers in the garden seemed to bend towards her. With so many flowers in bloom, the air itself seemed cleaner. 

“Oh, you aren’t the handyman at all! But perhaps you can help me? You see, we had a storm last night, the wall around my garden fell. All my chocobos escaped…” 

This was the kind of side-quest that normally would have promised great hilarity and much opportunity for comrades to bond, but unfortunately, this group needed to make good time so that Barret could return home to the young Marlene. 

So it was with great reluctance that Zack allowed himself to be dragged away by Cid and Barret, leaving the beautiful, mysterious priestess and her missing chocobos to the tardy, but no doubt very heroic handyman. 

However, the priestess did leave them with a parting gift - she gently pointed out the location of her cottage on Zack’s map, and also that the path they had previously thought themselves to be following was in fact a coffee stain. 

“That does explain why it seemed so meandering,” Zack mused, as Cid and Barret both looked upon him with murder in their eyes. 

The rest of their time through the forest passed without incident, except that they randomly encountered a ninja girl at the outskirts, who halted their progress but ultimately let them pass when they proved to be, in Barret’s words, “dead broke.” 

(In fact, there is another tale one could tell, of the handyman, the priestess, the ninja girl, and a wandering tabaxi youth seeking his place in the world - but that is a story for another time. )

Finally, they found their way to the foothills of the craggy mountains, and began the long, difficult climb to the cave of the dragon. 

As they climbed, they found themselves quite bored - so bored, in fact, that Zack began to wonder aloud about the lives of his companions. 

“So,” he said, casually spearing a poisonous snake at the end of his comically large sword, and flicking it off the path and into the scrubby bushes. (“Hey, that’s wasteful!” Barret reproached. “That snake never did nothin’ to you! It was just minding its own business!” “My apologies” Zack said easily, “I’ll leave the next snake to you.”)

“So,” Zack tried again, clearing his throat. He seemed to have made a very poor impression so far on his companions, which unsettled him. Generally his charming demeanor and generous personality won him friends wherever he went. What to do about this problem? He simply could not abide it, to be disliked by the very men who had put their trust in him and followed him.

“Once this is over, I figure I might settle down, with a good woman who has an independent spirit and a sense of adventure! (And definitely doesn’t share a single-room cottage with her mother, that is a mistake I’ll not repeat again, haha.) But how will you spend the money, Barret?”

“Marlene’s college fund,” Barret said shortly. “You talk too much, man.”

“That sounds like a wonderful idea! And you, Cid?”

“None of your business,” Cid said, grinning with all his teeth showing. He found people with personalities like Zack’s, who needed to be liked by all they came across, to be mostly very amusing. Cid himself did not give a rat’s ass if he was liked or not. 

“Aww, don’t be so cold… let’s get to know each other…” 

“Fine, I’ll tell ya,” Cid said graciously. “I’m needing a press bed for my shop back home - something that holds up better under the acid treatment I use for etching magic runes. The last boat’s hull I etched fell apart before it reached the ether.” 

“The ether?”

“Yeah, you know - once you leave this world, and pass through the dark space of the night sky, you’ll find yourself in a place of pure brightness. That’s the ether.” 

“I see…”

“What do you think the stars are, man? They’re the ether, shining through the holes in the sky!”

“I suppose I’d never thought about it,” Zack said honestly. “But it sounds like a beautiful place.”

“Isn’t that where elves come from?” Barret asked suddenly. Cid never talked about his background but he was, after all, a half-elf. “I read that in a book once.”

“So the legends say,” Cid said. “But that’s got nothing to do with me, I just want to see it for myself.”

“That sounds wonderful,” Zack said honestly. “Send for me when the boat is done, if there is space aboard I’ll come as well.”

“Not me,” Barret said. “I can’t be riskin’ my life for no good reason. Some of us have responsibilities in this world.”

“What’s a responsibility? I don’t think I’ve met her,” Zack said, and Cid gave a short laugh, charmed despite himself. 

“Sure thing,” he said. “If you’re still as crazy when the work is done as you are now, you can come with me on the Dawn Treader Mk 2.” 

“I’ll look forward to it.” 

Just then, they found a cloaked man - a druid? - blocking their path. The man - or was it a man? - was pale, with long, dark hair that fell halfway down his back. He wore a crimson cloak that only partially concealed his sharp fingernails, on hands that curved like claws at his side. 

“Excuse me,” he said, as they tensed and prepared for battle. The stranger blinked, as if surprised by their reaction. 

“Oh no, I don’t want to fight! You see, I’ve been asleep for some time… you are the first group of adventurers I’ve seen on these paths in many months. I merely wondered if you could tell me the date.”

“It’s the first day of the eighth moon,” Cid told him. 

“Ah, I see… and the year?”

“… it’s the twelfth year since the coronation of Prince Rufus,” Barret said. 

“Oh dear, it’s been longer than I thought… you wouldn’t happen to be traveling to the cave ahead, where the dragon is said to nest, would you?”

“None of your business.” 

“Who’s askin’?”

“Yes, we are headed there.”

Cid, Barret, and Zack all exchanged a look, as the stranger smiled serenely. 

“My name is Vincent,” he said, “and I thought as much.” 

“But unfortunately I must tell you - the reports of treasure in the cave are purely exaggerated. In fact, the last band of adventurers who passed through here took most of it, and what is left is only as much as an honest man could make in a week of honest work. So I’m afraid it won’t be worth your while to continue.”

“Oh, that’s too bad…” Zack said, while Cid and Barret looked at him as if he’d lost his entire damn mind. 

“How do you know?” Cid demanded. “Have you seen the cave?”

“I have seen the cave.”

“Next you’ll be sayin’ that you’ve seen the dragon…” Barret grumbled. 

“Aye, I’ve seen the dragon,” Vincent said, with a mysterious smile. 

Zack only grinned. “Wow,” he said. “This is awesome! I’ve never met a dragon before!! Pleased to me you, I’m Zack the adventurer!” And he extended a hand to the dragon-born Vincent, who merely regarded it with a puzzled expression.

“I’m pleased as well but… I’m not sure what you’re talking about…”

“No use hiding it! You exactly match the description!!! Ha, ha… to think that the dragon-born Vincent would still be alive after all this time… I thought this would be another dead end!” 

“Now wait a second!” Barret said, as Cid said, “What in the fresh hell?” 

“I see I’ll have to explain myself,” Zack said. “I apologize for my earlier deception… it was a necessary evil… you see, I was hired by the mayor of Shinra town to track down the father of an uncommonly intelligent and dangerous white-gold dragon…” 

“You have word of Sephiroth?!” Vincent said, and in his shock, he allowed his eyes to turn red and the copper scales at his neck to show, only partially obscured by his cloak…

But this, too, is a story for another time.

*********************

[What Dragon Colors Mean](https://www.cbr.com/dungeons-dragons-what-color-means/#:~:text=%20Dungeons%20%26%20Dragons%3A%20What%20a%20Dragon%E2%80%99s%20Color,are%20the%20scourge%20of%20the%20deserts%2C%E2%80%A6%20More%20)

Vincent isn’t Sephiroth’s father, he’s a Copper dragon.

Maybe Hojo is a White dragon and Lucretia is a Gold dragon - but an evil one hahaha.


	2. College AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cloud is the worst roommate ever and Barret wants to strangle him.
> 
> (Zack/Aerith in an established background relationship.)

"He doesn’t sound that bad, though?” Aerith sat forward on the rec room couch to show she was listening, away from Zack who pouted but then had the brilliant idea to lie sideways, his legs propped up at the ankles on the arm of the couch, upper body curved around her back like a question mark. He wrapped his arms around her waist as Aerith leaned back on her elbows, settling back onto him like he was a cushion. 

“Is that comfortable, baby?” She asked, sweetly.

“Oh, very… just a second though…” And Zack withdrew his arms to nab the actual couch cushions from behind his back and send them flying across the room, before settling back into place and bringing his arms back around her waist. “Now it’s perfect,” he said, nuzzling her back. 

“Hmm.”

“You're _right_ he ain’t that bad...” Barret said, long used to the PDAs of new college couples. “...he’s worse! I swear I never met a mopier, more misanthropic head case.”

“Maybe he just needs friends,” Aerith suggested. “Maybe we could invite him to eat with us?”

“That's a _hell_ no, you ever feed a stray cat before? Once you feed ‘em you can’t get rid of ‘em!”

“Oh, come on…”

“I had a roommate last year,” Yuffie said, from the foosball table where she was currently running away with the score, “Who would watch Scarface _every_ night. And he didn’t watch it with headphones on, either. I’d be lying awake on the top bunk, and he’d be watching Scarface on the bottom bunk, and… hey, it’s not funny!”

“It is a little bit funny,” Nanaki said, happy for the interruption to their game. He had yet to score a single point against Yuffie, though he had the defense that foosball did not exist in his country. “After all, Scarface... ”

“Scarface is a good movie,” Zack defended. “I’ve watched it probably a dozen times…”

“Did you watch it at full volume at four in the morning?” Yuffie said. “Did you _always_ watch it at full volume every single night while your innocent roommate was just trying to get her much-needed beauty sleep? Once I asked him to turn the volume down… and he did… but then about thirty minutes later… he started turning the volume back up again… until by the staircase scene, BAMN, full volume again.”

“That sounds truly awful,” Nanaki told her with sympathy, while Zack laughed and Aerith hid a smile behind one hand. “I cannot imagine what could lead someone to be so inconsiderate.”

“Right? No manners… it’s like some people were raised by wolves…”

“See, Barret?” Aerith said. “Cloud’s not _that_ bad. It could be worse.”

“Funny you bring up the wolves,” Barret said heavily, getting into the spirit of the thing. He had come to their dorm’s third floor rec room for one purpose, and one purpose only - to complain about his weird roommate until he’d let off enough steam that he could go back to their shared dorm room without wanting to punch the guy in his smug, blonde face. 

Because at the rate they were going, he’d either be brought up on charges after strangling his roommate in the middle of the night, or he’d be functionally moving out of their dorm room. Barret had met Zack and Aerith, Yuffie and Nanaki by spending more time in the rec room and top floor computer lab than in his own room for the first three weeks of their sophomore year. And he still didn’t know exactly what it was about Cloud that got under his skin so much… 

Oh, yeah. 

“Because he has - I’m not kiddin’ - at least three of them wolf t-shirts. Goddamn nerd! And no it’s _not_ bullshit hipster pretty-boy fashion,” he said to Zack, who closed his mouth and settled back down. “‘Cos I asked. He admires the wolves and wants to be like ‘em.” 

“Wolves are cool,” Zack defended. “They like… keep the prey population in check and shit.” 

“ _Is_ he pretty enough for bullshit hipster pretty-boy fashion?” Aerith asked, with interest. “You always talk about this guy, but we still don’t know what he looks like.” 

“Nuh _uh_ ,” Barret said. “You ain’t trappin’ me into talking about what my guy roommate looks like,” to which Aerith only held up her hands, acknowledging the bullseye.

“Worth a shot,” she said, serenely. 

“The other day,” Barret said, “I come home to change, ‘cos it’s damn hot outside, right? And I sweated through all my clothes just walkin’ to class. Global warming is here, baby! We damn near fucked up the planet! Anyway, I come home early… and he was…. Ugh!!! Makes me mad just thinkin’ about it.”

“What? What?” said Yuffie, who loved gossip. Nanaki just shook his head, gossip made him uncomfortable. Like Yuffie he was slightly younger than the rest of the group and had grown up with private tutors. But unlike Yuffie, who was making up for lost time now that she finally had school friends, he still clung to the lessons of his strict upbringing. 

“He was! Makin’ out with his girlfriend! In my goddamn computer chair!!!” Barret exploded, looking like he was ready to put his fist through the wall. 

“Woah,” Aerith said, while Zack said, “Didn’t expect that, respect the game.” 

“He has a _girlfriend_?” Yuffie said, while Nanaki just closed his eyes and pretended to be elsewhere. 

Barret sat down heavily on the only unoccupied chair in the room, “Yeah, he has a girlfriend… Don’t get me wrong, I don’t care about any of that crap,” he defended, to Aerith’s raised eyebrow. “He can make out with his girl as much as he wants! But it was _my chair_ and they were getting all heavy in it. That’s gross, use your own chair.” 

“I agree, that is disgusting,” Nanaki said, while Yuffie chimed in, “Mega gross!” and Aerith made a sound of agreement. 

Zack though, just looked thoughtful. “I dunno dude… your chair is hella comfortable… it’s like leather and shit…”

“That makes it _worse_ ,” Barret said. “Now every time I sit there I gotta wonder about the stains on it… that shit don’t come out of leather…” 

“True…”

“Anyway, thanks for comin’ to my TED talk. Some people don’t have any common sense.” 

“Or manners,” Nanaki added. 

“Or fashion sense,” Yuffie said loyally. 

“I still want to know what he looks like…” Aerith mused. 

“I bet he just needs guidance,” Zack said. “Someone who can tell him, dude to dude, when he’s being a weirdo.” 

“You volunteerin’?” Barret said. “‘Cause you’d be a hero.”

“Maybe,” Zack said. “Depends on whether I actually like the guy or not…so far he doesn’t sound that bad though… I kinda like the loners...”

“You’re only sayin’ that 'cos he’s not eating _your_ food outta the fridge when you’re out... “ 

“Let’s invite him to dinner,” Aerith said. “I’ve heard so much about Cloud, I really want to meet him… we can invite his girlfriend too…”

“I don’t think any of you were listenin’” Barret grumbled, “This dude is the worst.”

“He can’t be as bad as this other guy I heard about,” Yuffie said. “Listen, that guy…”

****

Cloud moved away from the door to the rec room. He’d been thinking about asking Yuffie if she wanted to play him in a game of pool, but now he didn’t feel like it anymore. 

He got about halfway down the hall, before he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, wait a bit!” Zack said, and guided him by the arm back towards the room. “My girlfriend wants to meet you.”

“I’m the worst,” Cloud said, miserably. “She doesn’t want to meet me.”

“That’s just Barret being dramatic,” Zack told him. “Come on, it’ll be fine. Promise.”

And Cloud was just desperate enough, after three weeks of sitting alone at every meal at their dorm’s cafeteria, that he let himself be led back - even though he knew better.

“Ok,” he said. “Fine.”

*********************

I forgot Reeve, again... Reeve is the dorm RA and Cid is a commuter.


	3. Soulbond AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five college friends plan a scientific expedition to a remote corner of the galaxy, only to be saddled with unwanted military supervision at the last moment.
> 
> (Cloud/Aerith, in my head this is eventually Clould/Tifa/Aeirth tho XD)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plot is basically a mashup of 90s manga Please Save My Earth and [Wuzzy's](https://thehuntyhunties.tumblr.com/) Queerplatonic Star Trek AU, haha. The murderaliens who need regular telepathic contact with 1-2 people or else their minds unravel concept is her idea, not mine!!!
> 
> UPDATE: no continuation for this one, at least not until I can make it more original. But feel free to hit me up if you're curious.

“Nice spread,” Yuffie said appreciatively, taking in the full table. In addition to coffee and tea, and sandwiches and pastries - all standard food you’d find at any academic conference - someone had taken the time to lay out what, to local sensibilities, would be considered a banquet - whole fresh fish and crab, individual custards, dumplings and puddings, fragrant sauces and fresh green vegetables on flat breads, all arranged on blue ceramic plates in a spiraling pattern, mimicking the logo of their University - a cresting wave, to indicate that graduates would travel all over the galaxy. 

“When I volunteered to waste the prime years of my youth in some backwater hellhole, this wasn't what I was expecting… I mean, with the budget cuts? But don’t get me wrong, I appreciate it,” Yuffie said, immediately piling her plate with bright green, leafy vegetables. 

“I heard our project is getting some interest, you know, from the bigwigs,” Tifa said, choosing a small whole fish and some sauces. She gestured vaguely in the direction of the golden tower, visible from the window of the large, airy hotel conference room (and indeed, from almost any place in the city). 

Yuffie nodded, knowing what Tifa was getting at. While ultimately all space exploration could be traced back to the Shinra Space Force, a military organization, they hadn’t expected their peaceful mission, to observe - only observe - a newly discovered planet in a remote corner of the galaxy, to draw any kind of interest from anyone important. 

“I heard they installed a new captain,” Barret grumbled. “Some military guy, who’ll beam word back to HQ every time we take a shit.”

“Sounds boring,” Nanaki remarked dryly. “Especially since they’ll be waiting a year to receive the transmissions.”

“Yeah…”

“I bet he’s old,” Yuffie said loyally, “and stuffy, and stupid. Don’t worry Barret, you’ll always be the leader in our hearts!”

“Yeah, it’s your project!” Tifa told him. “I can’t believe they’d take it away from you!”

“It’s all of our’s project,” Barret said, getting emotional. He stopped to let his voice settle, after all today was a day for celebration, not tears.. 

“We all worked on it… I can’t believe it’s really happening… who cares about the stupid military babysitter, we made it this far together. That’s enough for me!”

“Yeah!”

“Yes!”

“Well said!”

In fact it had been a bit of a joke proposal, late one night in the University dorms, when Yuffie had asked - drunkenly - why it was they couldn’t all get hired to the same project together after graduation, and stay together. 

Cid, in the engineering program, had dryly pointed out that this wouldn’t happen unless they came up with the project themselves, and since they didn’t study in the same department, it would need to be a real creative project to require all of their efforts. 

Tifa had offhandedly mentioned a lovely little world she’d learned about from an astronomer friend recently, that probably supported life, based on the chemical signatures, but was too far off the trade routes to have any military value. 

And then Barret, in a display of stubbornness, idealism, and love for his friends, had put together the proposal - with Nanaki’s incredibly patient help with the paperwork. 

“To our project!” The core team - Yuffie (medic), Tifa (paleobiologist), Nanaki (linguist), and Barret (physicist) - all clinked glasses. Cid was running late, as usual. 

“To new beginnings!” Nanaki said. 

***

Their military babysitter was next to arrive - with a member of the Shinra military police in tow. 

Reeve Tuesti was not, as Yuffie had predicted, old. In fact, he was hardly older than Barret - a suspicious thing, as one needed ambition to rise that quickly through the ranks. 

However, the fact that he’d brought a member of SOLDIER with him was the bigger surprise. 

This put everyone on edge, not only because of the sudden reminder of the military’s interest in their little vanity project, but also because the SOLDIER - Cloud Strife - was a Jenovan. 

“I’ve never seen one of you guys in person,” Yuffie said, boldly walking up to Cloud. He was dressed in the standard purple military uniform, but only wore one epaulet - a sign that he’d only joined very recently. “Is it true that you’re all trained as babies to kill people with your bare hands?“

“Only the old noble families do that,” Cloud said, seeming taken aback by her forwardness. “I’m a nobody… I’m sorry… could you move back? My ears are sensitive.”

“Oh yeah, you got it man!” Yuffie said, and backed up by about an inch. Tifa shook her head, she couldn’t understand Yuffie’s bravery. There was something about the military man that was profoundly unsettling - something that was almost, but not quite, like a human. 

_Of course he’s not human_ , she shook her head. _He’s Jenovan. Completely different planet…_

Jenovans had been the first of the space-faring races that humanity had discovered, in the initial outward push for resources - and the friction of first contact had almost destroyed both worlds. Now they survived more or less harmoniously, mostly by giving each other’s worlds a wide berth. 

It was considered very rude to comment on the impression most Jenovans gave off - not only did they seem aloof and mysterious, but they tended to provoke a flight-or-fight response in humans, who recognized instantly that these were dangerous, apex predators. 

_Of course, we’re apex predators too_ Tifa thought, _and so are the Tabaxi…_ the Tabaxi being the race of large, catlike predators to which Nanaki belonged. 

If the discovery of other species hadn’t come at the same time as the discovery of Warp drive, which opened the possibility of infinite worlds for expansion, most of which were not technologically advanced, and whose resources had not yet been extracted, perhaps the truce between these three worlds, and several others besides, would not have been possible. 

Still, just _knowing_ , intellectually, that the strange, blonde and silver haired aliens would not eat you did not make them less threatening. The Jenovans moved silently, had inhuman reflexive and sharp senses, and were telepaths, though the exact details of what this meant was a classified military secret. 

They made excellent assassins even if they no longer - officially - practiced the lost arts.

Yuffie was right - it wasn’t often one found oneself in the same room as a Jenovan. 

_But we are scientists, aren’t we?_ Tifa thought. _Perhaps this is a chance to make some scientific discoveries_. She smiled - like the rest of the team, she enjoyed a good challenge. 

****

They did the round of introductions. Cloud seemed surprised, and maybe slightly apprehensive, to learn that everyone here already knew each other from school. He’d be the outsider in more ways than one, Tifa thought, especially with the military connection. However, he relaxed a bit when Cid made an appearance - late as usual - since they’d apparently shared an elevator together the day before, which made him a somewhat familiar face. He relaxed more when their anthropologist, Vincent, made an appearance, and serenely began filling his plate with steak and raw meat, at ease despite not knowing anyone else in the group. 

Of course, Reeve also did his best to ensure the banquet went as smoothly as possible. They would all have to live together in close quarters for the next five years, there was no point starting out on an awkward note. Despite herself, Tifa found that she liked him. 

“He’s not that bad, huh?” She said to Barret and Nanaki, as Yuffie pestered Reeve for more classified details on their mission and Cloud and Vincent made awkward small talk over the food. “He seems sincerely interested in the scientific discoveries we’ll be making.” 

“He’s a politician, can’t trust him as far you can throw him.” Barret grumbled. 

“For Tifa, that might be fairly far,” Nanaki remarked. “Didn’t you study… what was it called… Judo?”

“Akido,” Tifa said. “But yeah, I could probably throw him at least like… six feet…”

“How far could you throw Cloud?” a curious voice asked. They all whipped their heads around, and stared. 

The woman in front of them was probably the most striking woman Tifa had ever seen. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful - though she was - but that she seemed to have a glow, an aura about her. In fact, the air around her seemed to have a different quality. It felt fresher, more alive… 

“Ah, let me introduce the last member of your group,” Reeve said, ambling toward them with Cloud and Vincent in tow. 

“After much debate, it’s been agreed that Aerith Gainsborough will join our expedition. She’s a Cetran witch - it’s my first time meeting one myself.”

 _A high priestess_ , Tifa thought, taking in Aerith’s elaborate robes and bright, green eyes. 

If the Jenovans were a classified military secret, even less was known about the Cetrans. It was said that 1 in 10,000 on their planet was born with the psychic gifts - the remnant of an ancient bloodline, long since diluted into the general population - that qualified one to join their religious order. Children who were identified as having these gifts were removed from their families at a young age, and grew up in “The Promised Land” - a special compound for witches where they spent their days totally naked and communing with nature. 

“Pleased to meet you,” Aerith said, and bowed low. “I fought long and hard to be allowed to leave my prison paradise to join this expedition. Very few on my home world supported my choice, but in the end they respected that it was my choice to make. I hope we’ll get along.” 

“So no fighting!” Reeve said, with a smile. 

Fighting… oh right. 

“He has a lower center of gravity… and he’s trained… I don’t know if I could throw him,” Tifa decided to answer Aerith’s earlier question. “Cloud, mean,” clarified, to the confused looks of the rest of the crew. 

Yuffie laughed, Barret snorted, and Cloud merely looked confused and slightly alarmed - again strange for a race of supposed deadly assassins. 

Aerith smiled, and Tifa found herself glad that she’d been the one to bring out that smile. Was this how everyone in the presence of a Cetran high priestess felt? Out of the corner of her eye, she noted Barret and Cid’s scowls. 

_They feel it, too, but they’re too stubborn to acknowledge it,_ she realized. _They’re fighting it._

“Maybe once we’ve all gotten to know each other, you two could have a match!” Aerith said. “I would love to find out.”

Reeve merely observed with an unreadable smile on his face. “A splendid idea,” he said. 

***

“Why’s it gotta be so cold in space!” Yuffie complained. “I can’t feel my legs!”

“You should have packed more clothes,” Nanaki reproached her. “Not all ships and planets are programmed to within a 10-degree temperature differential, like your homeworld.” 

“Easy for you to say, you’ve got fur,” she told him, holding her arms around herself hopping in place to keep warm. 

Tifa noted that she really wasn’t dressed for the cold, in shorts and a sleeveless turtleneck. 

But then, none of them had really prepared for this, expecting to spend the entire five-year mission at a comfortable temperature aboard the climate-controlled ship (or as Barret put it, “Since it can be any temperature, might as well be beach temperature!”). 

“You need to look past the fur,” Nanaki told her. “Our people _choose_ not to clothe ourselves… Or to wear any protection on our feet. Instead, the pups are exposed to a wide variety of temperatures from birth. And we develop the pads on our feet by running long distances across difficult terrain before we start any formal schooling.” 

“Hey, I played outside as a kid, too!” Yuffie said. “... sometimes,” she amended, “it was a lot more comfortable indoors. Wutai’s summers are brutally hot and humid.” 

“And now you see the consequences of your upbringing, it is only 10 degrees colder today than it was yesterday…” 

“It ain’t supposed to be this cold,” Barret ground out, “but the heating regulator’s on the fritz again. Cid’s taking a look at it.”

“And what are we supposed to do until he fixes it?” Yuffie demanded. “I can’t work in this cold! Not to mention, any nasty space viruses we pick up will just love the icy cold infirmary. It will be hell trying to keep it disinfected.” 

“Good to know you take your job seriously, at least,” Nanaki told her. Tifa wouldn’t have put it in quite that way, but she agreed - until they reached orbit around the planet they were going to study, she was left with functionally nothing to do. Only Cid, the engineer, and Yuffie, the medic, and Barret, who occasionally checked their star coordinates and made sure Reeve didn’t turn them all around in the middle of the night to satisfy some Cetran politician’s desire to bring the errant priestess back home, really had much to do. 

And Aerith, their biologist, although she was the problem at the moment… 

“I’m looking for blankets in the ship stores,” Barret said, “what are _you_ doin’ about it?”

“...Fair point,” Yuffie acknowledged. “Hey Red-”

“-I prefer Nanaki-”

“Let’s see what’s hiding in this bucket ‘o bolts. It’ll be like a game!”

***

Tifa made her way to the botanical bay, to see how Aerith and Cloud were making out. 

As she approached the bay where Aerith kept her garden - now completely overgrown with long grasses, vines for beans and grapes and squash, and a ground cover that looked like clover, under an artificially blue-green sky - she heard the telltale rising and falling tones of an argument. 

“Swear you do it on purpose... this is the second time we’ve had to deal with this nonsense! The rest of ‘em may be fooled by your sweet and kind act but you know exactly what you’re doing…”

“Don’t talk to Aerith that way, you-”

“No, Cloud, he’s right- this is my fault, I-”

“It’s not your fault,” Cloud insisted, “It’s just something that happens sometimes, you didn’t do anything wrong…”

“Well… maybe I did something a little bit wrong… “

“No, you didn’t!!” 

Tifa, at the door, realized that she was eavesdropping on a conversation that probably went deeper than who’s fault it was that the plants had overgrown their confinement, and gotten into the ship’s control systems. 

She hadn’t spent much time with Cloud, though she’d been curious about him (and Aerith, of course). But, was her curiosity strictly within the bounds of the mission? Or would it be somehow rude, overstepping, to want to know her shipmates better? Wouldn’t they be more comfortable if she kept a professional distance? 

Tifa had erred on the side of caution, and given them a wide berth. But now she realized that the rest of the crew may have felt the same way, resulting in the two of them having no one to talk to but each other. 

And still, she hesitated at the doorway. Was it really her place to say something? Who was she, really, to step in? She didn’t have any authority over either of them, in fact, on this crew, apart from Cloud reporting to Reeve and Reeve sending updates on their progress to Shinra HQ, everyone was on the same level, equals. They wouldn’t owe her any kind of explanation. 

But, it felt so cowardly to just listen and not say anything… 

“JUST DON”T DO IT AGAIN, Christ, I don’t need the romance novel melodramatics!” Cid exploded. Aerith flinched and Cloud moved to cover her, but stopped himself. “I don’t give a rat’s ass whose fault it was, but next time, it might not be just the thermostat! We could lose vital ship functions! And then you can argue over who’s fault that was in hell!” 

“Of course,” Aerith said, sounding a bit contrite. 

“...Understood,” Cloud said, and Tifa thought she heard his voice waver - or was it her imagination? Jenovans were well known for keeping to themselves, and acting superior to humans who didn’t share their enhanced senses and (mysterious) psychic abilities. Why would a Jenovan care about being yelled at? 

“I’ll be staying here to assess the damage,” Cloud said. “You may leave.”

“Of all the… watch it, kid. I like you but you’re not the boss of me,” Cid grumbled. 

On his way out the door, he and Tifa exchanged a glance. “You might want to go in there,” Cid told her, softly. “I’m not good with people, that’s why I’m an engineer.” 

“But I think they could both use a friend.” 

***

It wasn’t so bad - the gardening, that is. 

The air in the botanical bay was fresh, fresher than Tifa could ever remember experiencing - and that included in her childhood, before she’d left home to enroll at the Academy, when her elementary school had traveled to their world’s terraformed moon on a field trip. 

Everything in the botanist’s bay had a deep, earthy smell, and with her fingers deep in the dirt, Tifa felt connected to the ship in a way she really hadn’t before - which was silly, because the ship was made of metal, and this layer of dirt didn’t go down more than a foot or two, at most. 

Under the dirt, special mats covered the metal floor, and acted as sponges to soak up the water, and redirect it back to the ship’s circulation systems. 

With this area sealed off from the rest of the rooms and corridors by an extra set of airlocks, and with the mats and metal flooring underneath, the plants really shouldn’t have been able to get out. 

“It is my fault, you know,” Aerith told them conversationally, as they dug up the plants that had grown into space between floors, where the heating pipes ran. It looked like the vines had entered first, their roots piercing through the mats and prying open the metal paneling underneath. After that, the grasses had followed, filling the cracks with green tufts and damaging the control wires that ran in pipes alongside the heating pipes. 

Luckily, the trees and bushes had been slower to make their move, though Tifa noticed some had extended their branches in the direction of the breech. 

“It’s not your fault,” Cloud said, stubbornly. “It’s just how you are.” 

“Maybe, but I know how to hold back, “Aerith says. “We were taught in the Promised Land, that there’s always a time and place.”

And she began singing:

A time to be born, a time to die

A time to plant, a time to reap

A time to break, a time to mend

A time to laugh, a time to weep

Tifa found herself enchanted, there was something bewitching about the song, the words as Aerith let them be formed and the released into the air. Aerith had a lovely voice, but Tifa felt it was something deeper than that - like she’d just witnessed some kind of religious ceremony or magic rite, a miracle related to Aerith’s mysterious Cetran powers. 

Cloud, next to her, looked like he’d just been told the secrets to life itself. 

“Oh for the love of-” And Aerith put her hand on her hips, and regarded the vines that had grown right back into the cracks on the floor.

“It was a song about waiting!” she told them, sounding as if she was scolding a group of errant children. “It’s not the right time for you guys to grow! Now we have to weed you again!” The vines just grew tighter, greener, in answer. 

Tifa blinked. “You can talk to them?” She said. She had talked to their dog, back home, but it had never occurred to her to talk to a plant. 

“Well, mostly I listen to them… they tell me what they need… but they don’t listen to _me_ , do they? I’m telling you guys, one more stunt like this and I won’t be able to sing to you anymore!” 

“Can you tell them to stop growing?” Tifa asked, and Aerith winced. 

“No, no… all plants want to grow. It would only hurt the plants to be asked to do something that’s against their nature. But it’s okay, they understand that it’s not their time right now. Right guys?”

It might have been Tifa’s imagination, but the vines seemed to come out more easily after that. 

****

For the next four hours, the three of them worked in companionable silence, or talked idly about the voyage and what they’d find when they arrived at their destination - which Tifa found strangely comfortable. 

It made her wonder - why had she tried so hard to keep her distance, before? After all, she was also a biologist, of a kind - she and Aerith might have found some common ground there. And Cloud, despite his initial chilly impression, seemed to crave the company. 

She resolved, from now on, to include Aerith and Cloud on whatever projects she found to pass the time. 

****

“Hey, look!” Yuffie and Nanaki burst into the bay. “We found clothes!”

“Are you sure these are clothes,” Cloud said, and it was the most relaxed Tifa had ever heard him, “They look more like blankets?”

“No they’re robes, see?” And Yuffie twirled around, to model the attire. With the blankets - robes - on, she looked a bit like a citizen of ancient Athens, ready to debate philosophy in the Agora. 

“Ohhh, that’s lovely!” Aerith said. “I can’t wait to try them on, let me see-”

And she began to shed her Cetran robes, to Tifa and Cloud’s horror. 

Yuffie, as a medic, took it in stride though. 

“Sure, just let me hold this up-” And she blocked the view of Aerith’s naked body with one of the long robes, a bit like using a towel to change at the beach. “You can change behind here, okay?”

“Oh - I’m sorry - I forgot! In The Promised Land we are naked, so...”

“It’s fine,” Tifa squeaked out, while Cloud just looked away, blushing. “Nothing to be ashamed of.”

Aerith laughed. “I would never be ashamed,” she told them. “But that was very rude of me, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“...It’s fine,” Cloud said, and Tifa nodded. 

They were all stuck together for the next four and a half years, they might as well learn to accept each other. 

****

The next time the ship’s systems went on the fritz, it was Aerith’s fault again - but this time the whole crew shared the blame, they’d asked her to sing. 

The time after that, it was actually not her fault at all. 

“Can’t you do something?” Barret asked Reeve. “You’re the programmer, dammit!”

“I can program in a course correction out of the asteroid field, but I’m not sure how that will affect our final time to destination,” Reeve told him. “As you know, the calculations to slow our descent out of Warp-”

“They’re a pain the butt, no, I hear ya,” Barret said. “Just give me an hour-”

“I don’t know if we’ll last another hour, with the damage the ship is taking-”

“Leave it to me.”

Barret and Reeve turned, slowly, to face Cloud. 

“I’ll take the landing shuttle, and clear a path ahead of the ship,” Cloud said. “If we go fast enough, just clearing the front will be fine.”

“Exactly like a SOLDIER training mission, eh? Go,” Reeve told him. 

“Hey, that’s a suicide mission…”

“Private, do you undertake this mission of your own free will? No coercion?”

“Yes, sir,” 

“The witness will confirm that there was no coercion and that the private is undertaking the mission of his own free will. Confirm recording.”

The ship beeped, once - a sign that their conversation would be included in the ship’s logs. 

Reeve turned to Barret, and spread his hands. “He wants to do it,” he said. “And we need him to do it. Let’s just get back to work - you work out the course correction, and I’ll program it into the computer.” 

***

As Cloud suited up, Cid ran the start-up program for the shuttle while Yuffie prepared a mobile medical station in the ship’s docking bay - just in case. 

“But I don’t think we’ll need any of this, because you’ll be fine,” she told him, brightly. 

“Yeah.”

Cloud turned to Aerith and Tifa, who’d come down to the bay to watch and offer their support. 

“See you soon,” he told them, and stepped into the shuttle with his helmet under one arm. 

They didn’t get the chance to say anything before he’d covered his head with the helmet, and keyed in the launch sequence. Everyone hastily stepped back into the corridor, before the bay could open to the vastness of space and the shuttle could tumble out. 

****

“He’d bleeding! Back up!”

In the end, Cloud had done exactly as he’d promised, and cleared the area in front of their ship for the hour and half Barret and Reeve had needed to work out their course correction 

Their new course would avoid the worst of the meteor field, and still arc through the correct sectors of subspace, to reach their final destination in a controlled year-long deceleration without missing the mark. In the vastness of space, this was the equivalent of hitting a speck of dust with a steel ball bearing shot from two miles away. 

However, even with the Jenovan’s superior reflexes and physiology, there was a limit to the way a landing shuttle could maneuver - and to the kinds of pressures a physical body could withstand. 

In the course of clearing the debris, Cloud had asked for - and received - permission to override the ship's safety systems, and move the shuttle at over 5Gs of acceleration. 

His brain had been slammed around in his skull like a bowling ball in a cage, and he was currently suffering from severe internal bleeding. 

“Cloud! Cloud! Stay here, don’t fall asleep… you’re having a concussion…”

“Pincushion?” He said, fading in an out of awareness. “Sounds painful…”

“I’ll stick you with pins if you fall asleep…!!’

Yuffie yelled at Cloud, while Tifa, concerned, bit her lip. She’d tried, but hadn’t gotten that much closer to him in the last month of travel, as the Jenovan, though happy to make small talk with her, had proved to be extremely reluctant to talk about himself. 

Aerith, on the other hand...

“Stay awake,” she told him, serenely, taking one of his hands in both of his own and they wheeled his stretcher to the medbay. “We’re here for you.”

“Not enough…” Cloud seemed to be losing track of where he was. “It’s not good enough. Sephiroth-”

“He’s not here.”

“He needs to be here. I was stupid to think I could leave on my own-”

“You were brave!”

“I was stupid.” Cloud opened both eyes, and looked at her. “It would only hurt the plants to be asked to do something against their nature. I’m like the plants...” 

“You can worry about that part later,” Yuffie said. “For now just try not to think too hard, you’re making it worse.” 

“Too late,” Cloud said, with a smile as he closed his eyes

***

It was a tense month as they waited for word on Cloud’s recovery. His injuries seemed to repair themselves, but his mental stability seemed to slip further away, even when Yuffie’s scans indicated he should be improving. 

Reeve seemed to know something - some military secret, some reason for Cloud’s slow recovery - but he wouldn’t say. 

Not, that is, until Cid, Barret and Vincent all cornered him in the navigation room one day, and threatened to take over control of the ship unless he came clean. 

“Only my passwords will work with the ship’s mainframe,” Reeve said, calmly. “I want to help you, but I’m bound by my oath to follow the chain of command.”

“I’ll show you a chain-of-command-” Barret growled, a gleam in his eye... 

“I’m afraid you are mistaken,” Vincent interrupted. 

Their mysterious anthropologist rarely spoke - all eyes immediately turned to him, and he blinked. 

“I’m older than I look,” he explained, sounding apologetic. "In my previous career, before I retired to pursue a career in academia, I worked for Shinra in the department of administrative research-”

“-special operations-” Reeve breathed-

“-as a programming specialist, and I’m afraid I know my way around a mainframe quite well.”

“And if that doesn’t work, there’s always the chain-of-command,” Barret finished for him, holding up a length of rope while Cid cracked his knuckles, menacingly.

Reeve sighed. 

“I suppose I am left with no choice… let the records show that I am outnumbered, and left with no leverage for bargaining,” he said mildly. “Copy.”

The ship beeped, and Reeve immediately relaxed. “He’s everything you want to know,” he said, sliding a thick file across the table. “I hope it helps.” 

Barret thumbed through the file - Cloud’s personnel file, medical history, military history, a section of Jenovan physiology and psychology, and a classified section. It was also neatly organized and color-coded. 

If he hadn’t known better, he’d think that Reeve had been planning to give it to them all along. 

***

“This says… let’s see….”

“Try ‘Sephiroth’ Tifa suggested. “I don’t know what that is, but Cloud seemed to think he needed it to stabilize.”

“Sure, no problem… let’s see… damn my fingers are too big for this…”

Eventually, Barret was able to bring the touch keypad on the file under his control, and entered the search term. What they found initially didn’t make a lot of sense, but by following the hyperlinked entries in the file they were eventually able to put together a fuller picture…

The Jenovans, as scary, dangerous, and powerful as they seemed, in fact were quite fragile in one way - their minds required a constant connection, or link, to each other, or else they would quickly start to degrade. 

These trust-based empathic bonds formed the basis of Jenovan society. During one of their lifetimes, a Jenovan could expect to form several such bonds, usually with close friends and family. 

However, it was not unusual for children in noble families to be forcibly bonded to older members of the family at a young age - to ensure they carried forward the family’s will. 

Cloud, an ordinary person, had reached adolescence without forming any bonds of any kind - not unusual, as it wasn’t until the hormones kicked in that the need for these bonds became intense, and without them, an individual’s sense of self began to slowly unravel. 

However, Cloud had been unlucky enough to have stumbled, exactly at that moment in life, into a bond so powerful it could never have been equitable. Cloud had accidentally bonded to Sephiroth, a radical fighter against the hegemony of the noble assassin families and wanted criminal. 

Cloud and Sephiroth had been bonded for five years, with Cloud’s main job being to stay in one place, and periodically renew their bond in order to keep Sephiroth mentally stable during his fight against their society. 

At the end of five years, Sephiroth had been captured, and Cloud’s fate had been brought up before council. No one had wanted him around, his presence served as a painful reminder of how fragile their minds could really be. To be used by another in a bond was a shameful, weak thing. 

At the same time, Cloud himself had not committed any crimes and could not be tried openly in court without raising uncomfortable questions about the experiments that had allowed Sephiroth to force a bond on an unwitting participant in the first place. 

Cloud had seemed like the perfect target for a Jenovan assassin - if they still existed - before a Shinra diplomatic officer had intervened. 

A peaceful trip to the edge of the galaxy, that would require military monitoring to protect the valuable property of the Cetran government that would also be aboard. 

And an attack dog, left without a leash. 

Reeve hadn’t gotten as far as he had within the Shinra military hierarchy, as fast as he had, without recognizing an opportunity, and he didn’t hesitate to seize the moment. 

***

Tifa couldn’t believe what she was reading. “But that’s-”

“A highly classified military secret,” Reeve told her. “The Jenovan peace, brokered a hundred years ago, could be broken in an instant if the colonies under her rule realized how easily they could break her operatives.”

“That’s _horrible_!” Tifa said. “Five years in a basement? Are you kidding me? That’s the most awful thing I’ve ever heard…”

“Err, yes…”

“I need to tell Aerith!” She got up. “I have no idea what we can do, but there has to be something-”

Aerith entered the room, quietly, and closed the door behind her. 

“I already know,” she said, sounding dazed. 

“He’s awake. And I know... everything.”


	4. Angels and Demons AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tifa is "the angel of the slums" and Sephiroth is the devil... so...

I'm feeling kinda burned out after writing almost 5.5k words yesterday (listen, for me it's a lot) so have a picture today. [Here](https://subdee.tumblr.com/post/624000187701002240/evanwhosjusthere-evanwhosjusthere) is the reference. 

Full size version [here](https://64.media.tumblr.com/0d5da91de238031f423ec7c8efd0f27a/06dba85af9c7048d-1b/s500x750/89deb87cb2903f6b61b297228e919da2fa389a8e.png)!


	5. Post-Apocalypse AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vincent travels the old roads. 
> 
> (Gen.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short one today, I'm saving my energy for tomorrow. ^^ Takes place post-game, mainly inspired by Yokohama Kadaishi Kikyo.

The highway followed the coastline, from Costa Del Sol to the defunct WRO base. 

With fewer and fewer vehicles on the roads these days, and no world government left to maintain them, the coastal highway was a shoddy affair, with grass growing from cracks in the pavement and tidal pools forming in the potholes. In some places, half the road had tumbled down the cliffs and into the sea, and in others the beach had come inland to claim it. 

Outside of where Costa del Sol had been, the highway was now completely covered in water at high tide, and sand at low tide. Long-legged shore birds waded across it, looking for trapped shellfish. Costa del Sol itself was gone as if it had never been - only the weathervane of President Shinra’s old mansion was visible above the water. 

How long had it been since Vincent had last been here? At least fifty years… 

He allowed himself a moment to feel sentimental. So much had changed, and yet, life went on. 

***

The resort town for the elite was gone, but the village where the workers of Costa del Sol’s many shops, taverns and restaurants had laid their heads each night was still around, just moved inland to higher ground. 

From the old highway, the dirt path to the village could only be traveled on foot, or by chocobo. Vincent left his moped on the side of the highway, keys in the ignition. It might be weeks before anyone else came across it. 

If someone did take it, he’d be spared the inconvenience of having to find more fuel for it. 

The hike to the village took half a day, but these days Vincent had nothing but time. 

As he walked along the path - really more of a trail, a bit of scuffed dirt worn into the grassy, rolling hillsides - he admired the flowers, in bloom after a recent rain. 

***

The village consisted of a single main road, a collection of houses with rabbits and pigeons kept in cages in the yards, a general store with old cigarette cartons and full-color ads for Shina tires arranged in the window, and the communal fields where the children took the family bison to graze each day. Past the communal fields were the vegetable plots, where the men worked in the morning and at night, when it was cooler.

The smell of animal manure was stronger than Vincent remembered, but he knew he’d eventually get used to it again. 

He took out the list - from Marlene’s granddaughter. 

“Blue dye… Coffee beans…glass beads… lace…” 

Perhaps he wouldn’t find all the items here, but that hardly mattered these days. All of the things on his list were luxuries, to decorate the little tea shop Dina had opened out of the front room of her house.

After Meteorfall, Cloud Strife had run a delivery service, but these days there wasn’t much of an urgency for ‘deliveries’ nor the means to hurry them up. Instead most travelers simply wanted to see what was left of the old cities, using the old roads, before they vanished for good. What Vincent had was more of a hobby, something that helped to pass the time. 

As the coastal cities disappeared under the water and the inland desert expanded to claim more of the interior, and people gradually rationed out the last of the gasoline, the entire world was, gently, entering into the twilight of human civilization - not with a bang but with a whimper. 

***

Vincent was in luck - on the same day he arrived, the travelers also made their appearance, selling plastic furniture and other antique trinkets out of the back of their biodiesel trucks. These days, a lot of people collected such things. 

With the new square metal coins, he bought the dye, lace and beads from Dina’s list, and also a few rolls of brightly patterned cloth for new clothes. Some of the patterns reminded him of the star maps in Cosmo Canyon, still the same the last time he’d visited as it had ever been, albeit more of a mecca for tourists these days. Cosmo Canyon was at the end of the road that ran south from New Corel where Dina lived, along the edge of the mountains (and, soon, the edge of the desert as well). 

Nanaki, he’d heard, was overseeing the construction of a grand library there - which Vincent found funny, because his people were capable of memorizing most of what was in the books, and he’d been present for some of the history in them. He also couldn’t hold a pen… but someone needed to oversee the work, he supposed. Whenever Vincent found an old disk or data drive on his travels, he saved it to bring there for transcription onto parchment. 

The travelers didn’t have any coffee beans, but they’d heard a rumor that somewhere outside the Bone Village, in the volcanic soil of the northern continent, there was still a small plantation. 

“But why do you want coffee beans, anyway?” They asked him. “Tea is easier to grow around here.”

“Just for variety,” he told them. 

***

What next? Vincent didn’t have a boat, nor any idea of where to find one. He decided to return with his haul and his moped to New Corel, at the mouth of the river that ran east to the inland sea. 

Afterward, he could see about hiring a boat out of one of the riverside shipyards, and sailing north to the Bone Village. 

After all, he had nothing but time.


	6. Superpowers/Superheroes AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zack and Cloud superhero origin story. 
> 
> (Gen.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lost the motivation for a few days, but we're back baby! Who needs Hospital AU and Childhood Friends AU when we have those things in canon anyway, am I right?

“Hey, hurry! Security’ll be back any minute!”

“You worry too much, Cloud…”

“And you don’t worry _enough_..!”

Zach just grinned - true - and took his time emptying his bladder. When you’d drunk as many PBRs as he and Cloud had, this was a process that could not be rushed. Afterwards he took a moment to shake off before tucking, while Cloud developed an anxious eye twitch as lookout. 

_Cute_ , Zack thought, _it’s so cute how nervous he is_. He himself wasn’t worried at all, they were two good-looking kids right? Zack was Puerto Rican, but white enough that cops usually didn’t hassle him about it. And Cloud, with his fluffy blonde hair and big blue eyes, looked like a Caucasian angel. At most they’d get a slap on the wrist for trespassing and be told to be on their way. 

It was clear that Cloud, unlike Zack, had never gotten in much trouble before. 

“Took you long enough - come on!” he said, and dragged Zack away from the little babbling brook in the woods behind the convenience store, and towards the bushes that marked the edge of US Government Property. 

“No- wait.” Zack said. “Those have thorns. Let’s follow the fence, there’s a path there.” 

“I thought you said no one ever comes back here?”

“It’s an animal path, plus the trees can’t grow so close to the fence. Don’t worry, it’s dark, no one will see us.” 

“…”

“Hey, I thought you said you wanted an adventure? You aren’t backing out on me are you?”

“…no,” Cloud said, and followed. 

***

They were a pretty unlikely pair, on the surface - Cloud, an army brat and a loner, never in one place long enough to make friends. And Zack, popular at school, but with a reputation as a charmer and a heart-breaker. 

In fact, the first thing Cloud had done when he met Zack was punch him, for stealing his girl. But the joke was on Cloud, because the girl had dumped them both afterward - telling Cloud they’d just been friends and to grow up before he tried dating again, and Zack that he shouldn’t have goaded Cloud into the fight. 

When the girls were right, the girls were right. Maybe he had been a little too cocksure about the girl in front of Cloud. 

Since they were both in the doghouse together, Zack had offered to buy Cloud a coffee by way of apology and they had, surprisingly, hit it off. There was something Zack liked about Cloud, who had close to zero confidence even though he was one of the smartest people Zack had ever met, and who desperately wanted friends but was too proud to show it. And Cloud suddenly found a whole new world open to him through his friendship with Zack - house parties, bonfires, fishing, hunting, offroading, sneaking out into the woods at night to go drinking. 

All the most fun things to do in the Ft. Junnon exurbs - as long as you had a friend. 

***

“Where are we going, anyway?” Cloud asked. 

“No idea,” Zack said. “I said I never tried going here before, right? Security is tight around the base, you’d think it was like Area 52 or something.”

“You mean Area 51?”

“No, that’s just a front to draw all the attention. They keep the real aliens in Area 52.”

Zack could almost physically feel Cloud rolling his eyes behind him. 

“…That’s stupid,” Cloud said, realizing that Zack couldn’t see his face in the twilight. “There are no aliens, the “U” in UFO just means unidentified. It’s all military spy planes.”

“How do you know?”

“Well what makes more sense, the US government is trying to test the planes where no one will catch them but they keep getting caught, or for 70 years no one’s found out about the aliens?” 

“Good point,” Zack told him. “But people have found out, you gotta watch some of these videos before you dismiss it out of hand.”

“I’ll watch your Youtube videos, but I’m not gonna be convinced,” Cloud told him. 

“Well, if you go into it with your mind already made up - hold on.” Zack stilled, listening. Cloud kept walking forward, and almost bumped into him. 

“Shhhhhh!” Zack said, crouching and putting a finger over his mouth. After a moment, Cloud crouched too, and they both held their breaths listening. 

After a while, feeling exposed next to the open chain link fence, Zack backed up on his hands and knees into the bushes, and Cloud followed. 

Under the tree canopy it was much darker. But if they were having trouble seeing without the light of the full moon, then hopefully anyone on patrol around the perimeter of the army base would have trouble seeing them, too. 

“You hear that?” Zack whispered. 

“I - wait, yeah,” Cloud said. “It sounds like…animals…”

The next time they heard the barking, the dogs were way closer and headed directly for them. Cloud and Zack exchanged a look, wild-eyed. 

“Run!!!” 

***

It was too dark to run in the woods, and the bark on the trees was too slippery to climb. Without discussing, they found themselves back at the fence, away from the dogs who were coming from further in the woods. There was barbed wire on top, but a gap just wide enough for two growing teen boys at the bottom. 

Zack and Cloud both hesitated. Running around in the woods, drinking - that was standard adolescent stuff. Sneaking into a military base at night was a far more serious offense. 

“I don’t know-” Zack couldn’t decide what to do, so Cloud made the decision for them. 

“Come on,” he said, and pulled Zack under the fence. 

****

Inside the Ft. Junnon base, there was a large open space, with a couple concrete outbuildings a few hundred yards apart. Zack scanned the yard, quickly, while Cloud watched the fence nervously to see if the dogs would chase them through. 

There was something that looked like a concrete dome on the far side - and a line of trees across the yard they could use for cover while they booked it across. 

“Come on!” he said, and they both took off running. 

****

When they reached the domed building, all the doors were locked - but a second floor window, they discovered, was open. Cloud played lookout for the second time that night while Zack took a ladder from the maintenance shed, and they climbed up and into the building. 

Only once they were inside the window, and listening to their hearts pound in an empty, circular corridor, did they stop to think about what they’d just done. 

“This is _so dumb_ ,” Cloud said, hiding his head in his hands and groaning. “The next person to walk in the yard will see the ladder. We’ll be in a _hundred_ times more trouble than if we’d just hidden in the equipment shed.” 

“But the door to the shed didn’t lock,” Zack said. “Those dogs, man…”

“Yeah.” Cloud looked absolutely miserable. He had a primal fear of dogs, especially guard dogs. When he’d heard the barking it was like his instincts took over… 

“My mom’s gonna be so pissed,” he said, with a sigh. “She hates it when I’m out late.” 

“Hey, relax!” Zack told him, with a bravado he didn't totally feel. One of them had to say calm, after all. “We aren’t caught yet. We just gotta wait here for a bit, then sneak out again before morning. I’ll call her and tell her you’re spending the night at my place.” 

“I hate this,” Cloud said, “…but thanks….wait.” 

From further down the corridor, they could hear the sound of footsteps, echoing. 

Back out the window, or forward through the open office door?

The sound of barking came, faintly, in the distance. From inside the fence?

Cloud and Zack darted forward at the same time. 

They let themselves into the office, closed the door, and stood completely still, shoulder to shoulder, against the wall behind it - so they’d be hidden by the door if it opened. 

Cloud closed his eyes and Zack found his hand and squeezed. 

But the footsteps just walked by. 

***

“I can’t take any more of this,” Cloud complained. “I thought my heart was gonna beat out of my chest.”

“Yeah… hey, I think they got some UFO shit in here,” Zack told him.

“What?”

“Yeah, take a look at these pictures…”

“Those are posters for science fiction movies,” Cloud told him, rolling his eyes. “It just means that whoever works here is a sci fi nerd. It makes sense, I think this is an observatory.”

“Ah, yeah, that does make sense,” Zack said, but he couldn’t hide the disappointment in his voice.

If they were going to sneak into a military base in the middle of the night, they might as well discover some cool secret shit right? Otherwise what was the point?

“I think I need to lie down,” Cloud decided, sounding the surest he had all night. “I feel like I’m having an adrenaline crash…. It’s like my legs and arms are jello. I feel nauseous.” 

“Yeah… good idea,” Zack said. “We should wait a bit before we try to get out, anyway, just in case that guy in the hallway comes back.”

He looked around. In the office, there was a desk, a chair, a few potted plants, the posters… and a single black, leather couch. 

“It’s mine,” Cloud told him, firmly. 

“We can share?”

“No way, dude, this is your fault!”

When Cloud was right, Cloud was right. Zack curled up on the carpet under the desk. It was surprisingly comfortable. 

****

When Cloud woke up - feeling more rested than he’d expected - he found Zack already up and on his phone, texting furiously. 

“Morning sleepyhead,” Zack told him, without looking up. 

“Morning,” Cloud said, and then it hit him- 

“Wait, MORNING? You don’t mean…” 

“Yup, you were totally out dude!” Zack told him. “I tried to wake you up a couple times, but you sleep like the dead.”

“What time is it?” Cloud asked, wild-eyed and close to panic. “My mom will-”

“Relax, dude, I already called your mom,” Zack told him. “She thinks you’re at my house. And it’s 3AM, we still have time to get out of here.”

“We gotta go NOW,” Cloud told him. “I think the barracks are pretty far from here, but in basic they’re up at 4AM. We gotta-” 

“Okay, okay, hold up,” Zack told him. “We’ll get out of here, but before that-”

There was no _before that_ to Cloud, they had to leave _already_ or-

Zack reached into his pockets, then showed his cupped hands to Cloud, looking like a poster for Earth Day. 

In his palms were several small, glowing spheres, each about the size of a marble. 

A red marble looked like it had a tiny flame glowing inside it; while a blue marble had a spiked, symmetrical shape like an ice crystal. A deep purple marble looked like it held a lightning storm; and a light green marble had a steady, calming white glow. Slight larger, and more sedate, were a gold marble, a silver marble, and a flickering orange-red marble that looked like a neon sign on the fritz. 

“What are _those_?” Cloud asked. He wanted to get on Zack’s case for getting them in even more trouble, but the swirling, glowing colors inside the spheres captured his attention. 

Zack shifted all the marbles to one hand and closed it, then with the other hand found Cloud’s - and let two glowing orbs fall into his upturned palm. 

“It’s alien shit, I told you,” Zack said. 

***

Getting out of the base was actually pretty easy, after that. 

They found another window on the far side of the circular corridor, and used Float to get down to the ground. 

At the fence, they disabled the cameras with Lightning, then used Fire to cut through the fence and Ice to cool down the metal enough to pass through. 

Once the dogs arrived, they slowed them down with Sleep, then used Exit to get away. 

And when Cloud twisted his ankle, they used Cure to heal it. 

It was just after 5AM when Zack quietly unlocked the back door to his house, and let them inside. 

Goddamn. They could do _anything_ with this shit - they were like _superheroes_ now.


	7. Farm/Ranch AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aerith and Tifa are horse girls. Cloud is the horse. 
> 
> (Aerith/Tifa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming out a discord discussion of whether there's a non-creepy way to describe Tifa's enormous jugs. You can decide whether I succeeded or not :P

Aerith watched the ranch hands as they watched Tifa ride around the course. 

Her seat, for a novice, was natural. She and the horse seemed to share an understanding, as she nudged him to one side or another, just with her knees. Her toned stomach, visible under her sports bra and tank, allowed her to shift her weight easily - she seemed to float above the horse, unmoving no matter which way Cloud turned. Stong, toned thighs in riding chaps kept a grip on the saddle without the beginner’s mistake of needing to clutch onto the pommel. And although Tifa held the reins in both hands, she barely used them, communicating mostly by shifts of weight and body language. 

As they rounded the last turn and trotted towards the stables, she leaned forward to whisper into the horse’s ear - probably something encouraging. 

That probably wasn’t what the ranch hands were noticing but pretending not to notice, though. 

As her horse slowed from a gallop to a trot, Tifa relaxed back into the seat, upright, and started to bounce. 

Bounce bounce, bounce bounce. Did it hurt? Aerith couldn’t help but wonder. It was pretty rare for someone as well-endowed as Tifa to take up horse-riding as a hobby - like distance runners, riders tended to be fairly small chested as a rule. 

Aerith smiled. She knew the ranch hands would not dare to say anything to a paying customer - as Tifa trotted past them, they studiously looked away, only to glance back after she’d passed. 

But Aerith was under no obligation to play by their rules. 

***

“That was a great performance,” she told Tifa, finding her in the stables with a brush in one hand. “Are you sure it’s only your third time?”

“Third time on this course,” Tifa told her, “But we grew up together, didn’t we, Cloud?” And as she said it, she ran her fingers along his cheek as he leaned into her touch, and closed his eyes… and then started and shied away, shaking out his mane and snorting reproachfully. 

Tifa laughed. “He’s shy,” she explained. “But he’s a sweetheart.”

“He seems like a sweetheart… can I touch him?”

“Sure, just be careful, he tends to be pretty distrustful. I had to rescue him from a bad owner, even after a couple months he still scares pretty easily.” 

Aerith approached slowly, both hands held out in front of her. “Easy, easy…. See, I’m not gonna put that terrible harness you…”

“You noticed, huh?” Tifa grimaced, and toed the harness - she’d taken it off as soon as they’d gotten to the stables, and discarded on the ground like a gross dead thing - to the side with one booted foot. “I don’t like using them, but it’s the rules here for beginners. And even though I grew up with horses, we never really rode them, just oversaw the breeding program. It was a conservation effort,” she explained to Aerith, as if holding off an objection to commercial horse breeding that Aerith hadn’t been about to make. “These guys are delicate, even though they’re also strong. We’re trying to save the breed.” 

“He’s beautiful,” Aerith told her honestly. “I’m glad I was able to watch you guys today.”

“Yeah, we had quite the audience today,” Tifa told her with a laugh. “Didn’t we, boy?” And she patted his side with the brush. 

Cloud snorted, looking at her with one eye while keeping the other firmly trained on Aerith, still paused with her hands outstretched. 

“It’s fine, she’s nice,” Tifa told him. “She doesn’t want to hurt you… right?”

“Of course not,” Aerith said, and centered herself with a deep breath. She was very good with animals, the key was to be friendly, but patient. She just waited with her hands out until she could sense Cloud was ready, and then slowly lowered a hand to pat him on the head, right on the blonde streak between his eyes. After the pat, she withdrew her hand a bit to gauge how he’d like it, then returned her hand to his forehead and gave him a rub. She left her hand there afterward and Cloud seemed to relax. “Were you about to brush him down?” she asked Tifa. 

“He hates the brush on his back legs - I think he wants a clear view of anyone near him,” Tifa said. “He likes it in front though… can you keep him occupied while I get it done? You’re really good at this. I guess you work here?”

“Nope, I just came to say hi to the animals,” Aerith said. “I’d love to work here some day, but right now I’m still in school.”

“Oh… right, I just assumed, because you’re dressed like a ranch hand,” Tifa said, gesturing to the cowboy boots and wide-brimmed hat. “Sorry for assuming,” Tifa said belatedly, and blushed. 

Aerith smiled a bit wider. Oh, this was promising.

“No, it’s fine,” she said. “I’ll take it as a compliment. I’ve always been good with animals.” 

“I’m really impressed,” Tifa told her seriously. “Cloud loves the attention, but he’s always afraid to let anyone give it to him. You got through to him real quick.” 

“Maybe he can tell how much I like him,” Aerith said, “Right, Cloud?” and she smiled at him and gave him another little pat, and then rubbed down the back of his head, firmly the way she knew horses tended to like. He bowed his head forward and let her while Tifa watched with a soft expression. When she lifted her eyes back to Aerith’s, her expression was evaluating. 

Very promising. 

“I’d like to get to know him better…. And you,” Aerith told her. “Do you want to ride with me to the gas station after this? There’s a little picnic table set out up front, we can get a drink and something to eat and talk.”

Tifa definitely blushed this time. “I’d like that,” she said. 

***

The ride to the gas station in Aerith’s pickup was rough - maybe rougher than riding a horse. 

“Suspension’s out,” Aerith told her, as they flew over another bump in the road and Tifa gave a whoop. “And these backcountry roads aren’t exactly doing us any favors.” 

“I love your truck,” Tifa said. “It’s not what I pictured you driving at all.” 

“What, because I wear a dress? Hold on,” and she gunned the ignition around the next bend in the road, taking it fast enough that the right tires almost - but didn’t quite - left the ground. Tifa grabbed the ‘oh shit’ handle to keep herself from being thrown out of the truck’s missing passenger side door. 

On a hot day like today, they crossbreeze through the open cab felt heavenly. 

“Do you take this on the highway?” Tifa asked. “How fast can it go? Where’d you get an antique like this, anyway?” 

“Yes, about forty, and it belonged to my dad,” Aerith told her. “He disappeared about ten years ago, and left me this in his will, but it’s in slightly worse shape than when he left it to me, I’m afraid.”

“Not being driven for years will do that,” Tifa said kindly. She had the tact to not mention the rest of it, which Aerith appreciated. 

After ten years, they’d been able to finally pronounce him legally dead, but in the interim, Aerith had gotten tired of talking about the specifics of the case to curious strangers. Over the years it had gotten easier, but it never got _easy_ to explain what had happened. 

A military guy, a soldier, on leave to hike through the desert surrounding the base - they’d never even found the campsite. Somehow Aerith had known even before the military officer had shown up on their doorstep that they’d never see him again. 

“Once I’m out of school and working, I want to spend some money to fix it up,” Aerith told her. “And then maybe I can take it out of state, and drive across the country.”

“That sounds wonderful,” Tifa told her. 

“… Or I might spend the money on a horse, I haven’t decided yet,” Aerith told her with a laugh. 

“Travel first,” Tifa advised. “Once you have a big animal like this you’re kind of chained to one place. Unless you pay the stable fees,” she added. 

“Oh I know, I’ve been coming to the ranch for a while, just on the weekends,” Aerith told her. “I don’t think some of these owners have even seen the horses they bought. On paper they belong to the owners, but in reality they are mine.” She smiled. 

“But my mom and I, we aren’t that well off. Most of the death payout from the military went towards paying off the mortgage and my school fees. I’m happy just getting to spend time with the animals.” 

“Yeah, I hear you,” Tifa said. “It’s my family’s business, but I think I would have found a way to be around horses even if it hadn’t been. There’s just something about that farm smell, you know? Fresh hay and sweat…”

“And manure…”

“That too, Tifa said, and smiled. 

****

They went into the store together, drawing a few curious looks from the locals. Aerith bought a six-pack of beer from the liquor store in the back, while Tifa looked over the brightly colored collection of fishing lures on display by the counter, and then did a double take when she saw the (slightly less brightly colored) ammo locked up in a glass display case right behind it. She was distracted, so Aerith paid the whole amount. They both got a sandwich from the deli counter afterwards, and took them out to eat in the parking lot. 

“Gas station, convenience store, liquor store, deli, fishing store and gun store all in one,” Aerith said. “Welcome to the backcountry.”

“I’ll cheers to that,” Tifa said, and grabbed a can from the six-pack. 

They clinked their cans together - they made a disappointingly soft sound as the metal gave way - only glass bottles really worked for cheersing. 

“To country living and fresh air.”

****

“So,” Aerith said, after they’d both started in on the sandwiches and beer. This was the tricky part - to make sure they were both on the same page. 

Tifa could really drink, she’d already tossed back two cans easily. 

“Let’s move back into the truck,” Tifa suggested, “And run the AC. It’s getting hot out here, and the beer is getting warm.”

“Ah…. sure,” Aerith said. “Though the AC is busted too…”

Tifa smiled. “How do you feel about drinking and driving?” She asked. “We could get a breeze going on the road… “

“I’m a lightweight,” Aerith confessed. “I shouldn’t really have more than one or two.”

“Then, since you’re driving, do you mind if I…?” Tifa gestured to the rest of the six pack. 

“Go for it,” Aerith told her, and watched as she cracked open another beer. Her throat, as she swallowed, was long and lovely. 

Is she nervous? Aerith wondered. Is that why she’s drinking so much? Or does she just like to drink?

Their fingers touched as they reached for the last two beers, and Tiffany looked more flushed. 

Nervous, then. 

Aerith hid a smile behind her beer. Tiffany was outgoing, but there was a core of shyness there too. It was an endearing contradiction and a boost to Aerith’s already high confidence. 

She knew exactly how to handle shy animals. 

***

“Where to?” Aerith asked her, once they’d finished up the food and drink, and returned to the truck. “I can drive you back to the farm, or show you around the countryside a little bit more. There isn’t much, but I’ve been coming out here for ten years, I know all the farms and trails.”

“I’d love to ride around with you,” Tifa confessed. “…But we gotta go back to the farm first, I left my luggage there.”

“Came straight out to see him from the airport, huh?” Aerith guessed sympathetically, turning the key in the ignition and praying for the engine to turn over on the first try. It caught, like usual, and she relaxed. 

“Yup, I know this place has a good reputation but I just didn’t want to leave him alone for too long,” Tifa said. “Cloud hates new places. I would have ridden on the truck with him too if they’d let me.” 

“Why didn’t they let you?” Aerith asked. “And why is Cloud here, if you have a family farm?” 

“There was a fire,” Tifa said. “We had to relocate a lot of the animals, until we could rebuild. I’m a little extra protective of Cloud, though, so I decided on this place because they’ve done rehabilitation work with mistreated animals before. But it was a little too far to ride in a cab the whole way.”

“You like riding in my cab,” Aerith pointed out, “And you even like the horse smell…”

“Yeah, but there were already two drivers,” Tifa laughed, “in a two-person cab. Crammed into the middle seat on a ten-hour interstate highway ride, sandwiched between two sweaty guys the whole time, no thanks.”

“They probably would have enjoyed it,” Aerith told her playfully. 

“I know they would have,” Tifa said, with her mouth quirked into a lopsided smile. “But that’s not my idea of quality time. And there’s an airport only an hour away from the farm.”

“Their loss, my gain,” Aerith said, and reached for the stick shift to accelerate.

She had to move Tifa’s knee, in the chaps, out of the away. She caught Tifa looking again, but Aerith was starting to enjoy herself. Tifa was easy-going, honest and open, and they had a lot of things in common. She was easy to talk to. Why rush things? 

***

They retrieved the luggage, and Tifa took her time saying goodbye to Cloud and making sure he was settled comfortably in his stall for the night. She had a long and exacting list of preferences to share with the stable hand who’d be in charge overnight - what he liked and didn’t like to eat, how he liked and didn’t like to be handled. Aerith felt sure there was a story there - sure, most horse people got attached to a particular animal but it didn’t usually go this deep - especially not for people who worked with horses for a living, like Tifa did. 

But whatever the story, it would come out with time. Aerith had nearly infinite patience. 

“Ready to go?” she asked, when Tifa came to the end of the list. She felt a bit sorry for the ranch worker, who looked like he’d reached the limit of what he could memorize. Tifa hesitated, clearly reluctant to leave her baby alone with strangers overnight, but not able to come up with an excuse to stay longer. 

In the end she sighed, cuddled with Cloud one last time and gave him a reassuring rub behind his ears. Then she stepped out of the stable and softly closed the door behind her. 

In the stall, Cloud gave a soft whiny - whatever attachment Tifa had, it was mutual. But he didn’t cause a fuss like some horses would. After a second she could hear the sound of him settling himself on the ground, preparing to sleep. 

“Does he sleep on the ground, or standing up?” she asked Tifa, as she gently lead her by the hand out of the barn, and back to her truck. Tifa had a heavy suitcase in one hand and Aerith had taken her other, lighter travel bag and thrown it over her shoulder. 

“Usually standing, but if he’s comfortable he’ll lay down,” Tifa said. “Or if he’s sad…”

“I’m sure he’s comfortable,” Aerith said. “And if he’s sad, you can bring him something tomorrow to cheer him up.”

“Yeah…” Tifa looked over at Aerith, sidelong through her bangs. “Thanks for understanding,” she said. 

“Of course, I’m a veterinary student because I love animals,” Aerith said. “I get it.”

“Not everyone does,” Tifa said. “Thank you.”

“That’s two ‘thanks’ in a row, there’s a penalty after the third one,” Aerith told her. “It’s not like I’m doing this purely out of the goodness of my heart, you know.” 

“No?”

“Nope.” Aerith let go of Tifa’s hand to toss the lighter bag into the back of her pickup truck, then lowered the tailgate so Tifa could also hoist her suitcase onto the bed. 

“Obviously, it’s because I like spending time with you,” she told Tifa - purely for the satisfaction of seeing her blush a fourth time. 

Aerith judged that this was the correct moment to cross the line. 

“I think I really like you - you’re cute and sweet,” she said. “Let’s drop off your stuff at the hotel, and then do you want to get a drink at the bar?”

“Yes,” Tifa said, and tilted her head. 

Aerith got the message, and leaned forward to kiss her.


	8. Rock Band AU / Pop Idol AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aerith is a pop idol with a good, pure reputation... and she hates it. 
> 
> (Aerith/Tifa, eventually hope to actually write this one LOLOL. For now an outline, just so I can keep the schedule.)

**POP IDOL AU - backstory:**

*Aerith is under the control her exploitative management company, Shinra Ent (think SM entertainment, the Kpop music label/talent agency/lifestyle brand)

*the Turks are long-suffering managers who make sure the idols get to gigs on time and don’t get photographed doing anything that would tarnish their image

*Aerith is a former child star with a pure, good image and she’s REALLY tired of it

*Ilfana may have also been a famous pop idol, and that’s why Shinra pays so much attention to Aerith and why she’s been in the business since she was young - she never really had a choice 

*Aerith sleeps with Zack (also a pop idol) as a form of rebellion but the record company hushes it up. 

*Or maybe they don’t hush it up, and his fans protect him / vilify Aerith because of Sexist Double Standards… maybe she loses a bunch of fans too. So now she’s even more controlled than before by her record label

**For purposes of this story, Tifa and Barret are old enough to legally smoke and drink in Japan (age 20). Aerith might or might not be. 

*Tifa is the smoking, drinking rocker but the twist is she’s actually pretty tame underneath the image… while Aerith is the actual hard partier 

**POP IDOL AU - plot** :

*Aerith is being escorted from point A to point B by reno and rude. her record label has learned that she needs two minders at all times or she’ll escape

*While reno is buying cigarettes at a convenience store, aerith takes advantage of rude’s crush on her to convince him to go inside to buy pads for her. 

*he takes the car keys in with him - he’s not an idiot - but she calls a taxi/uber and escapes

*she ends up in a punk bar because she just wants to party somewhere grimey

*and also because it’s an all-ages show and she doesn’t have ID on her since her managers hold those “for her” so she can’t go anywhere

*no one recognizes her at the punk bar because the punks don’t listen to pop music

*tifa’s band is on stage…here’s the lineup: Barret’s on the mic and writes lyrics and promotes the band, Tifa plays keys or maybe keytar, Yuffie is on drums, Cloud is rhythm/lead guitar (sometimes Tifa has the lead part sometimes he does), and Reeve is usually a trumpet player/saxophonist but he’s on bass in this band because they needed a bass player. 

*But Barret is trying to learn some basic bass with a prosthetic hand. 

*Cloud wears wigs, dresses and skirts onstage because it’s a punk band and f you he’ll dress how he wants

*Barret used to play classical/jazz piano, but after he lost an arm he’s on the mic only. He was in a punk group with Jessie, Biggs and Wedge (bass, guitar and drums) but they split amicably because he wanted to get more serious with the music and they just wanted to continue to have fun playing basic punk songs 

*Aerith loves the music, obviously!

*afterwards they hit it off at the bar. tifa still doesn’t know who aerith is. aerith has a really good time, and in the end gives tifa her phone number, at which point maybe tifa recognizes her? maybe not.

*at her next show aerith does the side-shave, gets a tattoo (real? fake? maybe it was always real but she never showed it before) and dresses like tifa and does a cover of a punk song that she bribed the engineers into adding on the setlist

*shinra management are furious but the song is well-received, they pivot, now this is part of your image, capitalism engulfs the protests against itself. no protests are possible within the system

*is aerith brave enough to rebel for real or will she settle for a symbolic rebellion?

**POP IDOL AU - resolution**

*can aerith join the band? Reeve has a full time corporate job, so they’re kinda looking for a new bassist so they can accept more gigs and travel. Aerith already knows how to play acoustic guitar because she is actually musical, even though only her fans really give her credit for her talent. she might be able to learn bass too. 

*maybe the old management, under pres shinra, was really stuck on the old idol image for aerith - pure maiden, wearing white, being nice to old men, having no input on the songwriting, etc. 

*but the new management, under rufus, is willing to be more experimental and they work out a deal where aerith can fill in bass for tifa’s band on a trial schedule. perhaps reeve works for shinra ent in marketing or something and he arranges it

*It’s basically a compromise so she won’t quit… and a way to kind of transition her image into a more ‘artist’ kind of image so she can stay relevant after aging out of being a pop idol

*But barret is against this because of all the corporate BS that will come along with the label attention. so now he has to decide whether to compromise his vision for the band, including his lyrics that are anti-corporate, or accept a deal with the devil to get more fans and popularity

*HOW WILL THE STORY END???? I honestly have no idea and I’m gonna leave it that way, because if I write it all out then I will have absolutely no motivation to ever write the story, XD


	9. Vampire AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cloud is a snacc.
> 
> (Cloud/Aerith and Cloud/Sephiroth)

If you took the wrong turn down the short and narrow alley, you could miss it - six cracked steps down to a hidden half-basement door. An unimposing sign above the brass door knocker indicated it was a hookah bar and coffee shop. 

Inside, you might be forgiven for thinking you’d stumbled into an ahistorical recreation of Victorian London. Gentlemen in top hats and tailcoats lounged next to other gentlemen in harem pants, and women in breeches and open silk shirts discussed the need to ventilate one’s drafty old mansion with women in morning dresses who’d left their parasols by the entrance. 

Cloud checked - again - the address on the delivery order. 

4B, Cortlandt Alley. There was no address on the building but it was the only door between 1 and 7 that wasn’t boarded up. 

He hesitated for a moment, not sure what to make of the people here - especially the feeling he couldn’t shake, that he was being very carefully watched and evaluated, though none of the customers had turned their heads or paused their conversations to look at him. 

It was very eerie to feel like you were being stared at while no one would meet your eye. 

But the tip on the online delivery had been very good, and rent was coming up soon. He needed the money, and it had been an easy grocery run - close to his apartment. 

The barista caught his eye in one of hers - bright red, he realized with a start. But she seemed friendly, so he carried the grocery bags over the counter and set them down. 

“First time, eh?” She asked, smiling sympathetically. “What’s the name on the order?”

...Weird, but Cloud appreciated not having to talk first. If he’d been more social, he’d have a job not through an app on his phone. 

“Aerith Gainsbourg,” he said. 

“Oh, Aerith should be here in a minute, she just stepped out,” the barista told him. “Why don’t you take a seat at one of the tables.”

“...They’re all full,” Cloud said, “I’ll wait outside.” A few tables had space at the ends, across from the customers, but Cloud wasn’t sure he wanted to know what went on here. He picked up Aerith’s groceries and started to leave the bar, sighing internally - if the wait was too long, the tip wouldn’t matter because he’d lose the time to take on another job. 

“Why don’t you sit with us?” The man’s voice startled Cloud, who hadn’t sensed anyone coming up behind him. He tensed, then relaxed.

“No thanks,” he said, without turning around. 

“Oh… but I insist,” Cloud stiffened as he felt a hand at his elbow. Fighting back the urge to deck the guy, he slowly turned around. 

The main in front of him wore a flashy brocade smoking robe, like an English gentleman out of a detective novel. He was taller and broader than Cloud, with silver hair although he looked young. His eyes were a piercing blue-green, and surprisingly familiar - after a second Cloud realized it was like looking into a mirror. He realized he’d been staring, drawn into the stranger’s face, and averted his eyes. 

“No thanks,” he repeated. 

As he backed away, the stranger followed, continuing to invade Cloud’s space. He scowled and looked around - but no one would meet his eyes. It was as if the two of them did not exist for the other patrons. Cloud felt a chill run down his back - what would happen if he just let this happen? It didn’t seem like anyone would intervene. 

Stop being so passive, he reminded himself. Stand up for yourself, aren’t you… a man?

He wasn’t sure if he really was a man, but more assertiveness was definitely called for here. 

“Knock it off or I’ll deck you,” he said, trying the best he could to impersonate the rude, rough boys he’d grown up with. He deepened his voice and growled it. 

“Please do,” the man said pleasantly, and smiled as he took another step towards Cloud, who instinctively backed away. 

Stand your ground! “Are you just going to let this happen?” he asked the barista, who was studiously not looking, just like the rest of the bar. “Kick this guy out, he’s harassing me.”

Tifa sighed, “Seph, you’re being rude,” she said. “You know we have rules here - Aerith has dibs on him.”

Wait… what?

“Aerith isn’t here,” Sephiroth told her, smiling. “And I doubt you want to challenge me.” 

_Know your place._

Cloud glanced around wildly - who had said that?

“I don’t, but I will if I have to… This is a neutral zone, follow the bar rules or you’re banned again.”

“It might be worth it,” Sephiroth said, turning again to look at Cloud…

...Hungrily? Cloud refused to look away this time, and stared back. He felt even as he did it that it was the wrong thing to do, he’d only drawn more attention to himself. Sephiroth smiled at him and his eyes started to glow, they seemed to turn more green and to swirl, like sea form… 

“Hands off,” a female voice said, as a hand passed between his eyes and Sephiroth’s. Cloud blinked, only then realizing that he’d instinctively moved forward towards the man he’d been trying to escape. He stepped back again, and this time Sephiroth made no move to follow. 

“Aerith,” he said instead, sounding annoyed. “You shouldn’t show off your toys like this.”

“I was doing no such thing, I just needed to take care of some business,” Aerith told him. She took Cloud by the arm and led him away and to a small table in the back. “I apologize for him,” she said. “He’s very competitive with me. And in his defense, you are even more appetizing than I thought you’d be. I think the entire bar must be a little in love with you, you have the most intriguing scent… but don’t worry, I won’t let them have you.”

Aerith smiled at him, and her eyes, also, started to turn. “I ordered you first, you’re mine,” she said, and leaned forward… 

Cloud noticed the fangs just a little too late. 

It wasn’t so bad, though. A bit like smoking from the hookah. Afterward he felt euphoric, but calm. And the tip was better than he thought, too. 

Waking up later in the day, in his apartment, he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten home. Aerith had draped her shawl over him and put all the groceries away in his refrigerator. He had a bit of a splitting headache, and a slightly crazed urge to return to the hookah bar a second time. 

No. He wouldn’t. Only addicts dealt with a hangover by going back for a second hit. 

The bar tucked into the alleyway was intriguing, though, and if he could avoid Sephiroth he had the feeling he wouldn’t mind going back... especially if he could get paid again. 

But the only way to handle addiction was to be disciplined about it, and stick to a schedule. 

Cloud pulled up the calendar app on his phone. Another two days ought to do it. Then he pulled up the job app, and left Aerith a five-star review and a note.


	10. Treasure Hunter / 19th Century / Detective AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We're going for a three-fer here, because this took a few days to write. :P 
> 
> It's a mystery story with Yuffie as a detective in late 19th century London. I guess the genre would be Victorian pulp adventure novel? Something like that. Takes a lot of inspiration from Phillip Pullman's Sally Lockhart mystery novels. 
> 
> Cast:
> 
> Yuffie - Chinese, from Hainan, her father is a diplomat 
> 
> Nanaki - Uighur, a student studying international diplomacy at the College of London
> 
> Aeirth - from Goa, India, her mother is a member of an obscure religious sect and her father is a British army officer 
> 
> Cloud and Tifa - Irish, grew up together. Tifa’s father has ties with the British colonial govt. 
> 
> Denzel - English, an orphan 
> 
> Barret - American, from South Carolina colony, a sailor and a free man. Refuses to board any ships going to the Americas, hence why he’s on the routes to SE Asia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one has a few pairings, but it's mostly gen adventure. If I told you the pairings ahead of time I'd give away the mystery. Hope you enjoy!

The row of townhouses, projecting a neat but anodyne appearance of upper-middle class respectability, occupied the end of a tree-lined street bordering the diplomat’s section of the city. One street over, in the housing for wealthy international students studying at the College of London, Yuffie Kusaragi, daughter of the Chinese diplomat from Hainan, had her office on a first-floor walkup. 

“Treasure Hunters’ Recovery Services - You Lose It, We’ll Find It” said the small metal plaque on the door. Nanaki sighed at “we” and wondered, idly, if that included him, as he always did when he read the sign. Yuffie was his first and best friend here but he didn’t entirely approve of her playing detective in some of the worst areas of London. 

He knocked on the door, then entered warrily, on the lookout for flying-

“On your left!” 

Nanaki ducked reflexively, as a curved throwing knife whirled above his head to embed itself in the wall next to the doorway, where Yuffie had hung a wooden target. 

“Ugh,” he said. “Can’t you practice somewhere else? What if I’d been the landlord coming to ask for your rent?”

“It’s the middle of the month,” Yuffie said, “And all that is handled by post. Besides, of course it was you, no one else walks with that stomp you have.”

“I don’t stomp,” Nanaki protested, though in the heavy sheepskin boots of his horse-riding people, he probably did. Yuffie didn’t bother to correct him, instead throwing and catching another knife to test the weight. Now that Nanaki had a better look, what he’d thought was a knife was more like a star, pointed on four corners. 

“Careful with that,” he told her, probably unnecessarily, as he hung his coat and hat on a hook by the door, toed off his boots, and headed for the kitchen to make himself a pot of tea. “It seems dangerous.”

“Of course it’s dangerous, that’s the point.” Yuffie flung the star carelessly - or seemingly carelessly - towards the door as she spoke. It embedded itself in the center of the wooden target, directly over the bullseye. 

“One day you’ll miss,” Nanaki told her, “and I’ll have to explain to Julia why there are knife holes in the plaster.” 

“I’d like to be there for that conversation, sounds highly entertaining,” Yuffie said with a grin, ambling over to the doorway to tug the throwing stars out of the wood as Nanaki made himself busy in the kitchen. 

Yuffie’s “office” consisted of a sitting room for discussion with clients, a kitchen, a bathroom, and Yuffie’s bedroom down a short hallway, all tastefully decorated in the style of an upper-class artistic Salon, which it had probably been before Yuffie had moved in. 

Over the warm wood flooring, Yuffie had placed some beautiful Uighur rugs that Nanaki had gifted her once, as thanks for helping him locate an ancestral hair clip. A number of other trophies decorated the bookshelves and beautiful Hainan objects d’art and art catalogs occupied a low wooden table in the center of the reception area. The ceilings were high, with crown molding, and large windows let in the light from the avenue outside. All in all a place where respectable men and women, society people, would feel comfortable seeking help in the recovery of their property. 

“Although, I’ll never miss,” Nanaki heard her call out from the next room. “My people are proud and militaristic, I was given a throwing star to cuddle as a baby in my cradle. We’re warriors at heart.”

“I doubt that,” Nanaki told her seriously, getting the kettle and teapot out of the cabinet. He had a sense of her people as rather indolent, lazy with the prosperity of their newly-opened trading ports and the warm weather. Though that could have been his own bias speaking, as he’d be the first to admit. Yuffie was an exceptionally strong-minded person, whatever her people’s traditions. 

“I’ll have the lavender Earl Grey,” she told him. “While you’re over there.”

“It’s not very good without milk,” Nanaki told her, “Or so I’ve been told.” Both of them, coming from societies that did not keep cows for milk, were lactose-intolerant, and sheep’s and goat’s milk - or in Yuffie’s case, coconut milk - was hard to come by in the local shops. 

“Never know unless we try right?” And saying that, she picked up another star and hefted it as if to throw, then paused. “Do you hear someone on the stairs?”

“Do you think it’s a customer?” Nanaki asked. “Describe what they look like.” This was a game he and Yuffie often played - although he, generally, was better. 

“A woman…. In boots…”

“She’s wearing a long but loose dress, the stride is wide,” Nanaki said. “Average height, more athletic than average…”

“A foreigner,” Yuffie decided. “Like us.”

“How can you tell that just from the gait?” Nanaki asked. 

“Just a hunch.”

The door opened then, and a woman in a long, loose pink dress under a red shawl stepped inside. The shawl covered her shoulders and hair, which was auburn and slightly curled, framing a heart-shaped face with startling green eyes. They both stared, mesmerized at her unusual beauty and slightly exotic looks - Yuffie was right, probably a foreigner - before Nanaki remembered himself with a start, and bustled over to offer his arm for the woman’s coat.

“Thank you,” she said, passing over both the coat and the shawl. Her dress underneath showed off her shoulders and collarbone, slightly scandalously according to the current fashion. She wore long gloves, which she removed and stuffed in the pockets of her coat. 

She was, indeed, wearing a pair of sensible leather boots. 

“Should I…?” the woman seemed unsure, looking between her boots, Yuffie and Nanaki’s feet in slippers and the shoes lined up neatly next to the door. 

“You can keep them on or take them off,” Yuffie said. “Whatever’s more comfortable.”

“I’m a guest, so I’ll take them off,” the woman said decisively. Yuffie warmed up to her immediately. Nanaki offered his arm, again, for her to hold as she bent to gracefully undo the laces on her boots. 

Just then the kettle whistled. Since Nanaki was busy being a gentleman, Yuffie brought the pot, kettle and sachet of tea leaves on a lacquered tray to the low table in the reception room, along with a ceramic pitcher of cream (for guests).

“So what brings you here?” she asked, setting the tray down and pouring the tea over the leaves. 

***

The woman’s name was Aerith, and she was indeed a foreigner - from Goa, India. Her mother, she explained, had been a member of an obscure religious sect there, and her father an officer in the British Royal army. However, following her mother’s death when she was five years old, she’d been sent to live with her father’s family in England, and hadn’t known her mother’s people well. 

Yuffie and Nanaki could both sympathize with this, having been similarly uprooted at young ages - Yuffie to travel with her father on his diplomatic missions, first to the Chinese capital and then here; and Nanaki as the chosen representative of his people, sent to a series of expensive private boarding schools in hopes that he would someday be able to represent their interests abroad. 

Aerith had learned of Yuffie’s hobby-business through an ad she’d placed in the newpaper, and, intrigued by the mystery of a foreign girl running a lost item retrieval service, determined to meet in person. They chatted for quite a while over tea and snacks, with Nanaki observing as ever how Yuffie’s diplomatic breeding came out at times like this. 

Eventually, Aerith seemed to come to the conclusion that they could be trusted to know the purpose of her visit. 

“It was an heirloom from my mother,” she explained. “Not very valuable, except to me. An opal, about the size of a coin, perfectly round, like a marble. If you hold it up to the light, there’s blue and green swirls you can make out against the pearly background. When I was in trouble as a child, I used to stare into it and imagine I was somewhere else… in the clouds, or on the sea. Anywhere except in the house with my strict English aunt and uncle, even though they were good to me. So you see, it would mean a great deal to me if you could recover it.”

“And when’s the last time you had this jewel?” Yuffie asked. To her, an opal that large sounded fairly valuable, and she made a note to look into the history of the gem later. Aerith seemed to be holding something back, but it could have been simple caution, to avoid Yuffie and Nanaki keeping the treasure for themselves. 

Aerith met her gaze evenly, holding her tea cup in both hands. She didn’t pretend to be put off by Yuffie’s forwardness, which Yuffie appreciated. Some of her female clients seemed trapped in a performance of helplessness, which English society encouraged, and couldn’t stop performing even when speaking to a female detective. 

Though since Yuffie was not English, she expected she got away with many things that the locals could not. Perhaps Aerith, despite her English family in the Midlands, was the same. 

“Two nights ago, I was walking home alone when my arms were pinned at my sides from behind. I screamed but no one was around to hear, but I managed to stomp one of his boots and catch a glimpse of his face as I turned around. I’m positive I would recognize him if I saw him again,” she said. 

“Describe the thief,” Yuffie commanded, glad to get straight to the point. 

“Average height… blond… green eyes… wearing a long black cloak. Some kind of military insignia on the clasp of his cloak.” Aerith said. “... I’m sorry I can’t be more specific than that, it was very dark out.” 

“It’s fine,” Yuffie told her, “I have an idea of where to start. In the meantime, about this gem…”’

***

Most ordinary detectives would not have been able to trace the history of the gem, but with her upper-class connections, free time, and elegantly trained handwriting, Yuffie was able to determine within several days that this gem had, as she’d suspected, somewhat of a reputation. 

It had once between a religious object, the centerpiece of an old temple that had burned down in a rebellion against the Empire. Many of the temple’s artworks had ended up in the India Museum that housed items acquired by the British East India company, not on display but in the vast underground vaults where countless unnamed treasures were kept in unmarked boxes and crates. When the India Museum was closed and its collections dispersed to other museums and private collectors, the gem, known as the White Materia, had gone missing. 

More interesting to Yuffie, who believed in the supernatural, was that the White Materia was rumored to have magical powers - especially when reunited with its counterpart, the Black Materia, which was owned by a private collector.

Aerith’s motivations in withholding this information seemed fairly clear - though the gem might not have much value by itself, as part of a missing collection it would be invaluable. 

“You’re going to the docks, aren’t you,” Nanaki said, once they’d both watched Yuffie’s connection, a so-called ‘Oriental expert’ of the old India Museum, exit the office, to a waiting carriage outside. He’d been extremely interested to know where Yuffie’s interest in the White Materia had originated, and implied very obviously how happy the British Museum would be to take it off her hands. 

“I’ll be fine,” Yuffie said, waving his concern aside. “You worry too much. Don’t you know I mastered five different kinds of martial arts before I could walk?”

“It’s no place for a lady,” Nanaki said, disapproval clear in his voice. “Even a lady like you.”

“Yeah but,” Yuffie said with a grin, “I won’t have to be there long. You remember Aerith’s description of the thief right? It sounded exactly like…”

“Be careful,” Nanaki warned, gathering up the tea things. “As much time as you spend with low-lifes…”

“I’ll be fine, “ Yuffie assured him. “Stop worrying so much.”

****

Yuffie headed toward the waterfront, submerging her sense of unease. As much bravado as she showed to Nanaki - who worried too much anyway - this was further into the dockyards than she normally went. She was accustomed to meeting her contact at one of the bars where the sailors and dockworkers mingled with prostitutes and off-duty bankers, one step removed from the worst of the criminal activity on the docks themselves. 

As Yuffie walked further into the slums, past the back alley-pubs and carts selling hot pasties to dockworkers, she felt as if she’d passed an invisible border between the realm of ordinary London and another realm. 

It was hard to say exactly what the difference was, except that fewer people were around and those who were had a watchful, furtive and dangerous air about them. A man stumbled down the street, unseeing. Yuffie was reminded of an account of voodoo she’d read in the newspaper, the man looked like a zombie. He staggered forward with a vacant expression, dragging his feet as if they belonged to someone else, a bit of drool escaping his frozen smile to run down his chin. Something about him was profoundly unsettling; Yuffie crossed the street, and gave him a wide berth. 

“This ain’t no place for a lady,” a voice growled from the shadows. ‘You lost?”

“I’m on my way to-” and Yuffie named the address her contact had given her for the meetup. Then she smiled at the man, a large Black sailor dressed in colors for Her Majesty’s navy, and batted her eyelashes trying to look fetching. “How about an escort, Mister?”

“Why’d you wanna go to a place like that?” The sailor demanded. “Runnin’ around out here’s bad enough.” He had a flat accent. West Indies? The Carolinas? Yuffie hadn’t met many people from the New World, despite her contacts. 

“I’m meeting someone there,” Yuffie said, and showed him the note she’d received in response to her inquiry yesterday. The handwriting was neat, the way a child would have written it - the handwriting of someone who hadn’t completed much formal schooling. The sailor took the note in one large hand, scanned it and growled. 

“Figures that disaster would drag other people into his mess,” he said angrily. “That really ain’t no place for a lady…”

“....but I know a determined face when I see one. I’d better take you there and make sure you don’t get into no trouble on the way.”

Yuffie just grinned at him, sweetly. The sailor was touchingly concerned with her welfare, in a way that told Yuffie that he probably had a wife or daughter he cared for - maybe even a daughter around her age. 

“Thank you so much, Mister!” she gushed, taking one of the sailor’s muscled arms and looping around one of hers, as if they were about to go strolling in the park. 

“Come on, let’s get this over with,” he grumbled. “The sooner you find out what kinda guy you’re dealin’ with the better.”

“My name’s Yuffie,” she told him, ignoring the slander against her contact. “What’s yours?”

“...I’m Barret,” the man said. “And I’m warnin’ you - it’s ugly.”

***

They arrived at the address printed on Yuffie’s letter, a former customs house at the edge of the dockyards. 

Inside, a curtain separating the front room from the back hung behind an unsmiling Asian man seated at a long wooden table. In front of the man, a signboard had a printed menu in ten or so languages. At either end of the table were two large Chinese sailors with sabers prominently tucked into their belts. 

“I’m looking for someone,” Yuffie told the man in the middle, keeping a respectful distance as she passed over the note from her contact. The guards stared at her and Yuffie suppressed a shiver, determined to not show any signs of fear. She tried slouching, scratching at a leg with a foot and generally acting like someone who came to opium dens all the time. 

“Back room,” the man eventually said, with an accent. Interestingly, he sounded like he spoke the Mandarin Yuffie had learned in the capital - very rare on the docks, where most sailors came from the British protectorate of Kowloon and spoke Cantonese or a local dialect (or, generally, both). Yuffie answered in English as there was no point giving away how many languages she understood. 

“Thanks!” she told him, taking the envelope back. She pushed past the heavy brocade curtains and into the back room, Barret trailing behind her. 

In the back, she was reminded of the army barracks where she’d briefly lived with her mother during the evacuation of Qiongshan after a hurricane. But instead of cots, narrow mattresses were arranged on the floor in two neat, long rows. Heavy smoke hung in the air, smelling like incense and something sweet, and Yuffie felt momentarily dizzy. But also cocooned, safe, and ready to curl up on one of the mattresses doze off… 

“Hey,” Barret told her, a hand on her upper arm. “Stay focused. You don’t wanna drop yer guard in here.” 

And indeed, as Yuffie pinched herself to wake up, she saw several men in Chinese sailor’s uniforms watching her intently, eyes dark. They held her gaze as she looked back at them, then glanced away - but not before she caught the weight of calculation in their eyes, as if they were assessing how much money they’d get from selling her off. 

Yuffie only had a small jade pendant, from her mother, and a knife in one boot - she’d purposefully left all her other valuables at home. But she was young and cute. She met their gazes until they looked away. 

The walls were covered in what looked like velvet drapes, and the mattresses, at least, were mostly clean. Drug paraphernalia including the long bamboo pipes and bowls, needles and lamps were arranged on trays not unlike Yuffie’s tea tray on the floor and several low tables around the room. All in all, this was one of the nicer opium dens in Limehouse - the kind of place one might stumble into as a tourist looking for an adventure. 

Yuffie looked around for her contact, avoiding the calculating gazes of the Chinese sailors. 

“He’s there,” Barret said, pointing and sounding disgusted. 

Cloud lay sprawled on a mattress halfway down the row. One foot, missing its boot, spilled off the mattress, and an arm. The other arm lay across his face. Yuffie crept closer, hating the incurious stares of the addicts who had not yet fallen asleep. Their eyes were placid and empty, like cows, and it gave her the creeps. 

“Cloud?” she asked, and moved his arm away with a toe. His head lolled to the side and his eyes, open, stared straight through her without seeing. 

“Let’s get out of here,” Barret said, and dragged her out. 

****

It’s what they deserve, Yuffie thought, as she breathed deeply from the clean air outside. 

Back home, as many as one in ten people had an opium addiction, reaching the highest branches of government office. Civil society was slowly unraveling, as posts went unfilled or were filled by weak-minded people who took bribes to maintain their habits. 

And the people of this country had unloaded huge quantities of this addictive substance on the docks they’d forced open across China, far surpassing the trade that had existed before - to make money. If their own sailors were casualties of the war, it was only what they deserved. 

Still, to see her friend Cloud - normally animated and sarcastic - in that state had unnerved her. Yuffie followed Barret quietly as he led the way out of the dockyards, willing her thoughts to settle. 

****

They stopped in a pub about twenty minutes away - a plain, small place, smelling strongly of cheap pine and rice liquor, similar to the kinds of places where Yuffie normally met Cloud. Borrowing a pen from the barmaid, she scribbled the bar’s address on the back of the envelope and gave it to Barret, who promised to pass it on to Cloud once he woke from his drugged stupor. 

With nothing else to do, Yuffie let her eyes wander around the bar. The barmaid, a friend of Barret’s, met her eyes with a small friendly smile and called out that she’d be over soon. A few sailors drank in a closed, tight circle in the corner, sharing a pitcher of beer between them. The bar boy hovered nearby, listening in on their conversation while pretending to sweep. Yuffie grinned at him and he ducked his head, caught out. 

Since she had time to kill, Yuffie decided to spare the barmaid the trip to her table, and sat at the bar counter. 

“Do you have plum wine?” It was a long shot, but with so many Chinese sailors working at the docks, it seemed worth asking. 

The barmaid’s eyes lit up. “A connoisseur, I see,” she said, taking a bottle out from under the bar. “This kind is my favorite.”

“Have a round on me,” Yuffie said. It would be strange to waste the imported alcohol on drinking alone, though she was sure many homesick sailors had done it. 

Or perhaps they’d drunk with the pretty, friendly barmaid, who was open and approachable the way the best hostesses were. Yuffie bet the barmaid did good business here, talking to the lonely and heartsick and letting them buy the rounds. 

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” she laughed, and leaned down again to fetch two cups. Her laugh was pleasant and lilting, and she had a slight accent that reminded Yuffie of Cloud’s. Irish?

Setting one cup in front of Yuffie and one in front of herself, she poured the drinks, then lifted her cup to cheers with Yuffie. “My name is Tifa,” she said. 

“Yuffie.” They drank in a gulp, as the custom, and Tifa refilled the cups again. 

“So Yuffie,” she said, as Yuffie took her time on the second glass, sipping demurely. “Not that I want to pry, but how do you know Barret?”

“We just met,” Yuffie said, “He thought I shouldn’t be out on the docks alone. How do you know Cloud?”

It was a hunch, based on their similar accents, and Tifa’s over-acted show of disinterest when Yuffie had sent Barret away - listening in while pretending not to listen in. But Tifa flushed, looked guilty, and looked away. Bullseye. 

“We grew up together,” she said softly. “...How was he?”

“He’s coming here, so you’ll find out soon,” Yuffie said, evading the question. Tifa seemed sweet, but if she worked this close to the docks then she probably already knew Cloud’s habits. 

“Hey, I bet you overhear a lot of gossip here,” Yuffie said, changing the topic. “Ever hear of something called the White Materia? A woman named Aerith hired me to find it for her.” 

“No, I haven’t heard of that… what is it?” Tifa said, and Yuffie narrowed her eyes. 

Fundamentally, Tifa seemed like an honest person and not the kind of practiced liar who’d be able to put Yuffie off the scent (if indeed, anyone could - after moving around so often, Yuffie considered herself a great judge of character). 

Which was why her current behavior raised alarms - although it was subtle, she'd reacted to Aerith's name as if she was hiding something. Yuffie caught the nervous drumming of her fingers on the bar, and the way she briefly looked away before looking back. Her instincts told her Tifa had recognized the name - if not of the gem, then Aerith’s name. 

But she wouldn’t get anywhere letting on that she recognized the lie, so she just shrugged. “No reason,” she said. “I’ll ask Cloud about it later.”

****

When Cloud finally entered - looking as normal as he ever looked, but Yuffie found she couldn’t see him the same way anymore - Yuffie made a point of motioning him over to the bar, so they could talk where Tifa would be sure to overhear. Yuffie wanted to see the barmaid’s reaction, and puzzle out what had made her act so guilty. 

But as soon as Cloud entered, Tifa disappeared to the back room of the bar, leaving only the bar boy, Denzel, to overhear their conversation. 

“I want to apologize to you,” Cloud said. “I should never have asked you to go to that place…”

“It’s fine,” Yuffie lied. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.” 

That thought just seemed to depress Cloud more. “I didn’t want you to see me like that,” he said, softly. “But I thought you should know… I’m weak. I’m a weak person. Maybe you should pick another contact. I wanted to come clean, but I wasn’t sure how to do it. I didn’t want to keep deceiving you.”

“You aren’t weak,” Yuffie protested, but inwardly she wondered. Maybe he was right? She wasn’t sure she trusted him, anymore - not the way she had before. 

Cloud just watched her with narrowed, tired eyes. He probably knew what she was thinking. 

(In fact, he probably agreed with what she was thinking.) 

“So what is it you wanted to see me about?” he asked. “Another stolen vase?”

“That was just the one time,” Yuffie protested. “And no… I wanted you to pass on this note.” 

She handed over the envelope, closed with wax and the seal of her father’s office. 

“That’s for the mob bosses,” she explained. “This is a diplomatic mission for the security of Hainan.” Not exactly true, but she was increasingly convinced that it wasn’t exactly a lie, either.

Knowing the history of the gem, the issue seemed more complicated, diplomatically speaking, than the random mugging Aerith had described. In any case, as most contraband of any value passes through the hands of the mob bosses on its way out of the country, this was the best Yuffie could do to track down the item. She’d previously asked a friend in the police to keep a similar eye on the pawn shops, before learning of the gem’s true value. 

“This letter has been opened and resealed,” Cloud said clinically, examining the envelope in his hands. “Right here, you can see where the old wax and the new wax are melted together.”

“Do you think the boss will notice?” Yuffie asked, with wide eyes, trying to look young and innocent. 

“Not if I don’t point it out,” Cloud said smugly, and Yuffie rolled her eyes. This was the annoying but endearing jerk she was used to. 

“Listen, my father is a very busy man. I don’t need to bother him *every* time I need a new letter of introduction,” she said. 

“So you just forge his signature?”

“I’ll have you know, the seal is real,” Yuffie said, with dignity. 

“So you broke into his office, stole his seal and had a copy made…”

“...I don’t have to answer that,” she said. “Will you do it, or not? You’re the only person I can trust for this, Cloud.”

“...I’ll do it,” he said. “Just don’t… forget what I told you, okay? About myself?”

“I know,” Yuffie said. “I won’t forget.”

She thought about it as she paid him the rate they’d previously agreed on. She couldn’t help feeling guilty about the payment, and wondered if she should offer to buy him something instead - food, drink or lodging. He’d probably use the money to get high. 

****

“So to sum up the case so far,” Nanaki said. 

“Uh huh,” Yuffie said. She often discussed her cases with Nanaki - he was smart, and she trusted him. 

More importantly, he was nearby, in the apartment across the hall. 

“Our…. your client, Aerith, told us the gem was stolen by a mugger, and gave Cloud’s description.”

“Or someone who looked like him,” Yuffie agreed. 

“Right, or someone who looked like him. She also said the gem has no value, except sentimental, but you were able to determine that this isn’t true.”

“It’s rumored to have strong magic powers,” Yuffie said. “Supposedly it holds the energy of generations of shamans, and can be used to focus energy in magic spells.”

“Spells aren’t real,” Nanaki said, “but people who believe they are real are capable of acting very irrationally.”

“Magic is real,” Yuffie told him. “Some Buddhist monks can live for months in the mountains without needing to eat or sleep. A rare few have attained enlightenment and become immortal.”

“We also have mystics,” Nanaki told her, “but there’s a scientific explanation for everything they can do. It’s related to breathing exercises and hypnosis. And of course, some of them are just conmen.”

“They sent you away too young,” Yuffie told him. Nanaki just rolled his eyes at her, it wasn’t worth digging up their old argument right now. 

“Right,” he said. “A valuable cultural artifact, important to a religious sect that was almost completely wiped out, seemingly with magic powers, that your British friends would love to put in their museum. And the mugger resembles your friend Cloud.”

“When I went to meet him,” Yuffie said, “I ran into two other people who already knew him. Tifa seemed to know Aerith, too. It could be a coincidence but…”

“No, I agree with you,” Nanaki said. “The odds of so many people… who all have history with each other and with the gem… something is going on.” 

They met each other’s eyes, across the table. 

“I should meet with Aerith again,” Yuffie said. 

Nanaki nodded. “Her apartment is close to my lecture hall," he offered. “I’ll drop off the note for you?”

***

After Nanaki left, Yuffie decided to write another letter - this one to the head of the British museum. 

She paused. Normally, she kept her father’s diplomatic seal in a hidden pocket on the insides of her jacket. But the seal was gone, replaced with the cork from a bottle of plum wine, covered in wax. 

When could… 

Yuffie thought back to the bar. Cloud, across from her, could have made the switch at any time, but she’d had her eyes on him and her guard up. Tifa had never emerged from the back. 

But the bar boy, Denzel… 

Yuffie couldn’t figure out why he would have done it - maybe on Tifa’s orders? It didn’t make sense, but there was a lot about the situation she didn’t know. The best thing would be to clear things up with Aerith, first. 

And in the meantime, she’d get the chance to keep her lockpicking skills sharp. 

Yuffie grinned. Whistling, she packed her kit, and headed for the College of London to pick up her lookout. She had his lecture schedule memorized, obviously. 

****

Breaking into her father’s office was hardly sporting - the guards on watch at the embassy just waved her through the front gate, which made it easy enough for her to unlock a window on the first floor and, cheerfully, bid them goodnight. 

Later, once it was dark enough, she and Nanaki made their way back in through the upper story window. As they crept down the hall, she pointed out to him all the places where the floorboards would creak. 

She’d broken into her father’s office so many times, it was almost second nature at this point. However, after easing the office door open, and moving aside the painting above the desk while Nanaki peered down the hall with far too much nervousness, she paused. 

Her old man had upgraded the safe. Damn. But what was life, without challenge? Sitting backwards with her legs through the arms of the fussy, carved wooden desk chair, with her lockpick kit laid out on the desk behind her, Yuffie got to work. 

New safe or not, no lock was safe from Yuffie Kusaragi, Treasure Hunter! 

About thirty minutes later, she was able to finally open the safe, with a soft “aha!” that had Nanaki glancing wildly down the hallway to see if anyone had heard. 

Yuffie rolled her eyes. She wouldn’t get in trouble, even if she was caught - and she wouldn’t let Nanaki get in trouble either. If anything, her old man would be proud that this safe, too, had yielded to his daughter’s incredible skill. 

Inside, a duplicate of her father’s seal sat next to an expensive bottle of wine, two bottles of whisky, a small jade statue and… the Black Materia???

Frowning, Yuffie took the materia from the safe. She couldn’t be sure, but the gem matched Aerith’s description - about the size of a coin, perfectly spherical like a marble, with swirls of green and blue dancing over the pearly shimmer. 

Except instead of a white pearl, this was a black pearl, easily recognizable even to those who didn’t know the gem’s history and far more valuable. 

Frowning, Yuffie weighed her options. If the gem was locked up here, it was probably for a good reason. It would be safer here, in the safe, than in her mostly unsecured office. 

On the other hand… 

Why had Aerith asked her, of all people, to retrieve the White Materia? Had she known, when she’d asked, about Yuffie’s connection to it? 

Why had Cloud asked her to meet him somewhere she could have easily been robbed?

How were Barret, Tifa, and Denzel connected to the case? 

The materia, in her hand, had an insistent weight. As she gazed at the swirling colors that danced across its surface, she had a feeling that it wanted to be taken from the safe - not locked up in a vault, but used by living, breathing people who could appreciate its power and history. 

Yuffie bit her lip. Leaving the gem locked up would be the wrong thing to do, she was absolutely certain of that. With it in her hand, she felt the path to enlightenment, normally closed except to the most studious mystics and shamans, opening before her. She felt connected, not just to the gem, but to Aerith’s people, and all other lost peoples, whose practices had been lost to the awful march of the colonial British empire, across which the sun never set. 

(And to her own people’s empire, as shabby as it was at the moment.) 

Yuffie tossed the gem in the air, and caught it thoughtfully. A plan was forming in her mind. 

***

Pretending to sleep in her bedroom later that night, Yuffie heard the telltale shuffling - a man, tall but not too tall, dressed in sailor’s boots and a floor-length cloak. She kept her eyes closed and her ears open. Once he was halfway down the stairs, she rolled out of bed - fully clothed - and silently followed him out. 

***

The black-cloaked figure - the more Yuffie tailed him, the less sure she was it was Cloud - circled the block several times before alighting into a carriage on L____ Street. 

This was no problem for a ninja like Yuffie, of course. Trotting after the carriage, she took a moment to duck into an alley, and closing her eyes against the sudden brightness, fired off two flairs - 

A red one, indicating the quarry was on the move, and a blue one, indicating that he was headed northwest. 

Of course, everyone would see the fireworks, but hopefully the man in the carriage wouldn’t make the connection. 

Coming out of the alley, she noticed the carriage entering a roundabout, and hurried to catch up. Fortunately, it exited the roundabout still heading northwest. 

At this time of night, most Londoners had long retired to bed - Yuffie had noticed that most people in this country kept early hours, dinner by 5pm (or even 4pm, for those who could only afford one meal a day) and asleep by eight or nine. It meant she had to be more careful to not be spotted, but also that she was in little danger of losing the carriage in a crowd. 

At the next roundabout a familiar voice sounded behind her. 

“Need a lift?” Nanaki said. 

***

They ended up in Maida Vale, next to the park, in a nondescript neighborhood where small houses had a little yard out back, and the larger houses had their own small vegetable gardens. It still looked like a village, not yet swallowed by the larger metropolis. But looks, of course, could be deceiving. 

They parked a good distance away. Yuffie persuaded Nanaki, with some effort, to wait in the carriage - but he pressed his pistol into her hand. 

“In case you need it,” he said. “After an hour, I’m coming in after you.” 

“Give me two hours,” Yuffie said, “I might need to be sneaky.” 

“Fine,” he said, and made a show of removing his pocket watch and placing it on one knee. “You may have two hours before I storm the building, and send my carriageman to fetch your father.”

She’d better keep track of the time, Yuffie thought. It wouldn’t do to involve the delegation - she didn’t want to cause an international incident. 

“You worry too much,” she told him, and gave him a kiss on the cheek as she exited the carriage. 

He blushed. 

***

The house had a little garden, with a chicken coop in the middle and a guard dog who’d worn a circle into the grass around the coop, “herding” the chickens inside. 

Yuffie used all her stealth skills to slip past the chickens and the dog, who regarded her curiously but let her pass as she made no effort towards the roosting birds. 

“Good boy,” Yuffie whispered. She’d always had a way with animals. 

She crept in through the back door, finding herself in the kitchen. She couldn’t hear anyone on this floor of the house, but - 

Ah yes. The basement. 

Carefully oiling the door to the basement with a small can of motor oil - one never knew when one would need such a thing - she quietly picked the lock and slipped down the stairs, removing her shoes to muffle her footsteps. 

The staircase led to a small, sooty room. Yuffie thought of lighting a match, but paused when she recognized the smell of coal dust. She was in the house’s coal storage room. The outer walls of the house were streaked with dust, and the inner wall - 

This side of the basement was divided from the other side, with no door between them. There must be a second staircase down - from the storm door in the garden, next to the chicken coop, she guessed, thinking back. 

Yuffie cursed. She couldn’t get there without setting off the dog… 

Maybe if she listened carefully at the wall, she could make out what the voices on the other side were saying. Yuffie carefully put her shoes back on and shuffled forward, trying not to get coal dust on her clothes - as hopeless as that was. 

As she came closer, she noticed a small gap where the interior wall met the brick outer wall of the house. 

Wasn’t that convenient... 

Creeping forward, Yuffie laid her head flat against the soot-streaked brick wall, and covered one eye to peer through the gap. 

At first, she couldn’t understand what she was seeing - where she’d expected one (blonde) man in a black cloak, she instead saw thirteen black cloaks. The owners stood around a chalk circle, and repeated a low chant. In the center of the circle…

Yuffie gasped. Aerith! 

Very quietly, she took out the pistol, and cocked it. 

The noise seemed to reverberate through the room, as loud as a gunshot would have been. Yuffie paused, holding her breath and listening, but it didn’t seem like anyone had heard her. The cloaked men continued their droning chant. Each time they repeated the chant, they took another step forward, tightening the circle around Aerith. 

All the figures were entirely covered by black cloaks, it was impossible to even know their genders. Yuffie examined them one by one, looking for someone with the right height and build to be Cloud. Inside the bulky cloaks, it was hard to tell, but she didn’t think any of them were. 

But hadn’t she followed Cloud from her apartment? 

The gap between the wall and brick wasn’t wide enough for both her eye and the gunbarrel. She’d have to make the shot blind. Yuffie tried the best she could to gauge the distances, memorize the room. The basement was unfinished, with a moldy smell indicated that it flooded in the rain. It looked like it might have been used for canning, or maybe as a wine cellar - empty wooden shelving took up two walls, while a wooden staircase down from the garden took up the third. 

The walls were plain brick, but not streaked with soot like the walls Yuffie had her cheek against. The light in the room came from the candles, 12 of them, spaced around the circle evenly. 

Why 12 candles, if there were thirteen cloaks?

As the circle closed, one figure stepped ahead of the others, closer to where Aerith lay - sleeping? - in the center of the chalk circle. He knelt, drawing a long sword that glinted in the candlelight - 

Yuffie put Nanaki’s pistol to the opening, but her arm was jostled from behind before she could pull the trigger. The shot went high, above the knees where she’d been aiming, and she heard a scream. 

Turning, Yuffie found her assailant behind her - the bar boy, Denzel. 

He’d backed away from her, and was preparing to flee up the stairs. Before he could, she rushed forward to tackle him. He went down easily, as light as a bundle of twigs. 

“Shhhh!” she said, and put her hand over his mouth. Her cover was already blown - even before the shot, they could have seen the glint of the muzzle of the gun in the candlelight - but he knew her name and could identify her. 

She dragged him behind her, and hid under the stairs. There was a small alcove there, covered by a piece of cloth - probably where he’d been hiding when she’d come down from the ground floor. Yuffie cursed her carelessness in not checking the entire basement before taking up her post. 

“Not a word,” she told him, taking the knife from her boot and holding it to his throat, “or I’ll slice you open. Understand?”

Denzel, wide-eyed, just nodded. 

Yuffie assessed the situation - it wasn’t good. In another 30 minutes, Nanaki would rush the front door, while his carriage driver hurried to alert the police. That was if he hadn’t heard the gunshot, and moved already. 

In the meantime, she knew she’d hit someone - but not who. It had been a man’s scream, so at least she hadn’t hurt Aerith. 

They’d certainly catch her if she took the stairs, and came out again through the kitchen. Was there any other way out of the basement?

Yuffie eyed the coal chute - a narrow opening, but Denzel was small and so was she. 

“You’ll go first,” she told him. “And if you shout or signal anyone-”

She held him still with a leg around one of his, and reached into her jacket. 

“I never miss,” she told him, and threw the pointed star straight through the coal chute. It curved upward and disappeared into the garden. 

It was a bluff - Yuffie didn’t believe in hurting children. But Denzel nodded, careful of the knife at his throat. 

“Good,” Yuffie said. “Up and at ‘em.” 

They made it to the garden, just in time to intercept Nanaki as he vaulted over the garden fence and made straight for the door to the canning room. The dog guarding the entrance started to bark, alerting everyone below of the intruder. 

Nanaki crouched down on all fours and growled back. 

Amazingly, the dog backed away - in confusion, Yuffie thought. 

“Nanaki!” she thrust Denzel forward, until he tripped and fell to the ground next to Nanaki’s crouch. “Take him back to the carriage and tie him up. I have to retrieve something, I’ll meet you in a moment.”

“Absolutely not,” he said, and motioned behind him. The carriage driver came forward, up to the gate. 

“Take him and hold him,” Nanaki said. “But don’t harm him.”

He turned back to her, a pistol already in his hand. 

“Lead on, my lady,” he said. 

***

As they burst through the canning room door and rushed down the stairs, Yuffie noticed something peculiar. 

None of the cloaked figures had moved from their spots - as if the ceremony had paused, but not stopped. 

“Miss Kisaragi… Mr. Bekri,” the central figure said, stepping forward. “Very good of you to join us.” 

He held his palms forward, revealing both materia - black and white - one in each palm. 

“I believe at least one of these is a copy,” he said. “Or the ceremony would have already concluded. You have ten seconds to tell me which one?”

“Or what?” Yuffie asked, but she already knew the answer. 

One of the cloaked figures - Cloud! - had slipped forward, and picked up Aerith under her arms and knees. He carried her, bridal style, forward towards the swordsman. 

They looked similar, Yuffie noted - both blonde, with the same blue eyes. Both of them wore regulation navy boots. The swordsman was taller, and his hair was a whiter blonde. From a distance, however, they could be mistaken for each other. 

Yuffie met Cloud’s eyes, while Nanaki stood silently behind him. Could she trust him?

Almost imperceptibly, Cloud nodded. 

“Okay,” Yuffie said, and walked forward, palms out - to show she wasn’t armed. Behind her, Nanaki lowered his pistol to the floor - only to raise it again as another cloaked figure approached the stairs. 

“Stay back,” he said, “Or I’ll shoot.” 

The figure hesitated, then took another step forward, until - 

“Do as he says,” the swordsman commanded, in a pleasantly clipped voice. He sounded like an officer in the army, used to commanding others. Yuffie decided to call him ‘the General’. 

“The situation is in hand,” The General said. “And does not require your input. I believe a simple exchange will be in everyone’s interests.” He spoke as if no one could argue with such a reasonable, responsible suggestion, and the cloaked figures, responding to the authority in his voice, backed down. 

He wants me to believe it’s a hostage exchange, Yuffie thought, but he still needs Aerith for his ritual. In her estimation, the General had no intention of completing the exchange, and was merely trying to delay her.

Most likely, he was stalling until one of his followers outside could move to the top of the stairs, to block off their escape route. She’d need to play this carefully. 

Moving slowly, Yuffie approached the General, then slowly - to show she wasn’t reaching for a weapon - reached a hand into her jacket’s inner pocket. At a snail’s pace, she brought out a smooth, black marble - about the size of a coin. 

Sephiroth leaned forward to examine the gem, and then - 

“Smoke bomb!” Yuffie yelled, and threw the object in her hand onto the floor. 

In the confusion, as the rest of the cloaked figures doubled over coughing, Cloud mounted the stairs with Aerith while Nanaki, holding his breath, shot anyone who approached. 

Yuffie snatched both materia from the General’s palms, and fled up the stairs after them. 

****

They didn’t return to her office, but headed straight for the countryside, stopping in Edgware where Yuffie borrowed the village’s only telephone to get a message to Tifa, letting her know they had Denzel.

Aerith suggested an address closer to her family’s estates where they could all meet to arrange the exchange, but Yuffie felt she was entitled, first, to knowing more about the entire affair. She suggested her own address, a small shopowner in St. Albans specializing in religious trinkets and carvings, and Aerith and Tifa agreed. 

It would not be easy nor cheap for Tifa to arrange transport out of London to St. Albans, about a day’s ride away by horse-drawn carriage, but that was her problem, not Yuffie’s. If she was desperate enough she could hire a guard to accompany her, and walk. 

The carriage, containing Cloud, Aerith, Denzel, Yuffie, Nanaki, and the driver, was crowded and uncomfortable. Nanaki took the seat in front next to the driver and Yuffie, after determining that Cloud and Aerith were unlikely to throw themselves from the moving carriage to flee back to London on foot, fled to the roof, leaving the two of them to sit in awkward silence together while Denzel slept. 

Of course, the illusion of privacy was mainly that - an illusion. Yuffie and Nanaki had excellent hearing. Very little of what Aerith and Cloud talked about was related to the cult, however, and most of it concerned Cloud’s health. Yuffie felt, after a while, as if she was intruding on a private conversation and shouldn’t be listening… 

But after what had transpired, she listened in anyway. The two were closer than she’d imagined, originally, and seemed to share some kind of history, though Yuffie could not imagine how’d they’d met.

At St. Albans, she shooed everyone upstairs to the rooms she secured at the inn, paying with an IOU and her father’s seal, the jade pendant around her neck assuring the clerk that she was who she said she was. 

There would be little point to getting into what had happened before Tifa arrived. Yuffie and Nanaki took turns keeping watch at the door, but neither Cloud nor Aerith, it seemed, had any intention of leaving their rooms at the inn. Denzel had never been further than ten streets away from the street in the dockyards where he’d been abandoned as a child and was not a flight risk either. 

They’d come into town midday on Friday; Tifa and Barret arrived early in the morning on Sunday, as the cathedral bells were ringing, having walked through the night. 

Rather than be seen out in public on a church day, they all slept through Sunday services, and met in the backroom of Yuffie’s shopkeeper friend on Sunday afternoon for supper. 

****

“Denzel!” Tifa said first thing, “You’re all right! Did they hurt you?”

Denzel shook his head shyly, “No, and he - “ nodding towards Nanaki - “taught me a game with string, called cat’s cradle, and how to flip a coin and catch it without looking.”

“Oh good,” Tifa said, while Barret, next to her, immediately relaxed. He scooped Denzel up to his shoulders, with the kind of practice that told Yuffie that he definitely had children of his own. 

“They feedin’ you alright?” he asked, and Denzel nodded. 

“Yeah, s’alright,” he said modestly, while Yuffie snorted. He’d been eating his weight in stew at the pub across the street since they’d arrived. That was what she deserved for starting an open tab there. 

“I think what we’d all like to know,” Nanaki said, observing, “Is why Ms. Yuffie was hired to locate an item, when you already knew perfectly well who had taken it and that her father held the twin item in a safe in his office.” 

“Sephiroth,” Cloud growled, and Aerith placed a hand over his arm to calm him, which, surprisingly, worked. Tifa drummed her fingers on the wooden table and looked away, while Barret looked like he was about to say something but settled for shifting his chair closer to hers. 

Aha, Yuffie though. 

“I’m the last of my mother’s people,” Aerith told them, “but there are many who are interested in our powers. Lieutenant Sephiroth is one such person.” 

“Powers?” Yuffie asked. Forget the love triangle - this was the interesting part of the story. 

Nanaki’s eyebrow twitched, within the Islamic tradition a mystic sect known as the Sufi were said to have supernatural powers deriving from their devotion to God. But Nanaki, himself, did not believe in magic or magical powers. 

“Yes, the White Materia has healing powers,” Aerith explained. “For instance…” she glanced at Cloud, and a look passed between them that had the weight of history behind it. 

Barret put his hand over Tifa’s. 

“I think I can guess,” Yuffie said. “Please correct me if I’m wrong.” 

Cloud, Aerith, Tifa and Barret turned to look at her, startled. Nanaki just smiled, this was always his favorite part of their cases together. 

In the end it was a fairly simple story. What kind of detective would she be if she couldn’t put the obvious pieces together? 

“The White Materia has healing properties, and the Black Materia has destructive properties,” Yuffie said. “Am I right so far?”

“You’re just repeatin’ what she said,” Barret said, pointing to Aerith. “I ain’t impressed yet.” 

“I wasn’t finished! Hold yer horses!” Yuffie said in an exaggerated cowboy accent, which drew a guffaw from Barret and a small smile from Tifa. Cloud raised an eyebrow, while Aerith hid her smile behind one hand. Denzel just looked confused, and unsure of what the joke was. 

“Ahem… as I was saying, the White Materia can be used for healing. For instance, I suspect that Cloud has probably been cured of his addiction.” 

“Is that true?” Tifa asked him, amazed. “Are you cured?”

“Physically cured,” he said bashfully. “But I probably shouldn’t go back to the London docks for a while. Too easy to fall into bad habits there.” 

Yuffie raised an eyebrow to Nanaki, daring him to comment on this evidence of the gem’s fantastic powers. He merely looked back, unimpressed. It has been several days, his look seemed to say, if this is true there is a perfectly rational explanation for it. 

I wonder what it will take to convince him, Yuffie pondered. It’s not as if Cloud could have hidden the symptoms of withdrawal easily, in the small carriage and then small inn they had shared together. Sometimes Nanaki’s rational explanations were far more convoluted that the simple, straightforward explanation that magic is real. 

“The Black Materia, based on the research I was required to do-” Yuffie gave Aertih a stern look, to which she merely gazed back, unphazed - “is rumored to have destructive powers. The religious precepts that funnel the power are dualistic, a bit like Zoroastrianism, and divide the divine will into light and dark, where one end is thick smoke, fire, ash, cremation and death; and the other end is transparent air, water, sunlight and healing. 

“They are equally important,” Aerith told her, “it’s not like one is good and the other is evil. Life only has meaning in a world that also has death. The crops grow better after the fire has cleared away the underbrush.”

“Of course,” Yuffie said, “My apologies if I implied anything else.” 

“It’s perfectly all right,” Aerith said. “The religion is frequently misunderstood. There seems to be an especial horror of death here, that is very different from how my mother taught me to think of these things. Please continue.”

“Gladly,” Yuffie grinned. 

“When the temple collection was moved from the basement of the India Museum, no one thought it odd that only the White materia was there, because the original donor had held back many items for private sale, looking only at the value of the individual items and not their historic value in relation to each other. 

“By tracing the chain of ownership, it would have been possible to determine that the Black Materia it had been purchased by one Mr. D_____, who later translated his interest in ‘Oriental’ art into a diplomatic position to Beijing.

“Because the two materia have a resonance, when the Black materia re-entered the country it set off a sympathetic response in the White materia, and from the timing of the response you must have determined that the gem was in my father’s possession - or at least the possession of someone at the embassy.”

“Correct,” Aerith said. “I didn’t know, but I suspected.” 

“So then you hired me… hoping I’d uncover the connection,” Yuffie said. 

“Also correct,” Aerith said. “I wasn’t sure it would work, but Cloud vouched for your ability to find lost items. He said you were very brave and talented.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Yuffie said haughtily, but she grinned. “I am good, though.” 

“Meanwhile, you arranged the theft to create a cover story…”

“She’s had the White Materia the whole time,” Cloud cut in. “I never took it. We thought it would be better to involve me in the story so that I could keep track of how far you were getting in your investigation. But we hadn’t realized that Sephiroth was also keeping track of you.”

“Aha! Yes, that makes sense,” Yuffie said. “I’d wondered about the coincidence and how deep the conspiracy went, but now I think that Ms. Tifa’s interest-” she nodded to the barkeep, who’d been unusually quiet as Cloud and Aerith told the story- “was purely personal.” 

“That’s not-”

“She likes you,” Yuffie told Cloud, “But it looks like your heart is already taken, hmm?” Cloud looked away, in Yuffie’s estimation he knew how Tifa felt and had decided the kindest course of action was not to say anything, either to confirm or deny. 

Tifa looked toward the floor, biting her lip. “I know I don’t have a claim on him,” she said. “Just because we grew up together and…. experienced some difficult things together, back home.” 

“Tifa…”

“You can do better anyway,” Barret grumbled. “I swear I never knew what you saw in him… he’s like a kite without a string, he just goes where the wind’s blowin’” 

“I agree with you actually,” Cloud said, while Aerith said, “Precisely.”

They all looked at each other, and this time Cloud and Tifa both smiled. 

Ugh, she was going to play matchmaker here, wasn’t she? Denzel just looked on with big eyes while Nanaki shook his head but appeared delighted. This was the kind of boring, pedestrian interpersonal drama that he believed was the motivating factor for most people’s actions. No sense of mystery at all! 

“The only thing I’m still trying to puzzle out,” Yuffie said, to cut into the mushy stuff, “Is the General’s - I mean Sephiroth’s - involvement. Why is he running a cult in the suburbs, and how did he even learn about the Materia in the first place?” 

“That’s probably my fault,” Cloud said. “I probably told him about it… you know, when I wasn’t quite myself.” The look of self-loathing he had, as he said it, was so intense that even Barret knew not to say anything more. 

When a friend makes a small mistake, Yuffie philosophized, it’s the job of their other friends to correct it. 

On the other hand, when someone you care about makes a large mistake, and knows it, they have already punished themselves and no further commentary is necessary. 

****

They took a break, to avoid the sensitive topic of Cloud’s weakness. Tifa asked Yuffie about her connection to the main who owned the workshop they were sitting in, and patiently listened to Yuffie’s explanation - from time to time, in the course of her adventuring work, she called upon her friend here to make copies of the items that were beyond her own abilities as a forger. Tifa asked a lot of questions and seemed genuinely interested hearing her answers. 

She’s a sweet girl, Yuffie thought, and genuinely thoughtful and charismatic in her own, more humble and approachable way. No wonder Barret liked her. 

After that conversation, Aerith explained the connection between Sephiroth, a Lieutenant - not a General, but Yuffie had never been very interested in the details of military hierarchy - in the same division of the British army as Aerith’s father had been. 

While stationed in Goa, Sephiroth had learned the details of Aerith’s sect, and decided that he as a convert had as much right to the religion as she did. The esoteric ritual he’d performed with followers in the basement of the suburban house had been meant to prove that the blood of the mystics flowed in his veins as well, cementing his place at the top of a local hierarchy. He’d recruited Denzel with a promise to put in a good word with the British Army Officer Corps on his behalf. 

Would the ceremony have had any, clearly magical effects if they hadn’t interrupted? Yuffie pondered this point. In any case, between the smoke bomb and the theft, Sephiroth would have a hard time convincing his current followers to stay, and might need to start over with a new batch. Certainly he was charismatic enough to find followers and unite them under his banner. However, she hoped he’d have a difficult time. People who looked to the mystic parts of other people’s religions to give their own lives deeper meaning annoyed her. 

***

After the breakdown, there was little to do but eat at the pub across the street, and work out the arrangements for travel back to London. 

“Aerith and I aren’t going back,” Cloud announced. “Tifa and Barret can take our seats in the carriage.”

“Where you goin’?” Barret asked, while Tifa said, “Where are you going? You’ll write, won’t you?”

“Liverpool,” Aerith said, while Cloud said, “India.” They looked at each other, and Aerith laughed. 

“I’ve decided to use the last of my inheritance to travel back to Goa,” she explained. “And try to reconnect with my mother’s people there. 

“It’s a long and perilous journey for a woman alone, so Cloud has offered to accompany me. The steamer leaves from India a month from now; we’ll travel to my aunt and uncle’s estate, and from there to Liverpool to catch a boat.” 

“Ohh…” Tifa seemed a bit unsure of how to take this news. 

“He’ll write,” Aerith promised her. “I’ll make him.”

Cloud opened his mouth to say something, then seemed to think better of it, and closed it again. They made a good match, Yuffie thought, thinking back to how annoyingly know-it-all Cloud could be, when he wasn’t berating himself for some perceived weakness. 

“Thank you,” Tifa told her, sincerely. “… I can see he’s in good hands.”

****

Nanaki, ever the gentleman, offered the services of his private carriage to the couple, while Yuffie complained that he was neglecting his own friends and consigning them to the slow, if reliable, coach service. But Aerith declined, saying she had enough funds from her father’s will to cover this cost as well as the passage to India. 

So Yuffie found herself once again on the roof of the carriage, explaining her adventures in China and London to a rapt - if somewhat clueless - audience of one small orphan boy. 

And in the meantime, giving the two in the carriage below some privacy.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Hit me up here or on tumblr at [subdee](https://subdee.tumblr.com/).


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